The Book of Us Read online

  “What if he finds out I work at the grocery store, meat packing, late at night? What if a girl does … Miranda Owens?”

  He knew where the Joneses lived, had been there once or twice. They were a nice family. Walker was struggling, though. He was a good kid, unremarkable, a little shy, and a little desperate to be liked at times, starved for peer affection. Noah was happy to oblige him. They needed each other.

  “I could be so much more,” said Noah out loud, but quiet enough so no one could hear him, as he left the apartments area, concrete-dominated and parking-lot ridden, and headed toward the Joneses’ downtown suburb, which was full of big trees and nice lawns. “I know I could. I look okay, I get looks from girls, I seem to have a brain in my head. What’s the point though?”

  The Jones family always greeted him as if he were their long-lost friend or a dearly missed relative. Walk’s mom was Asian, his father as white as milk, and they made a loving and sometimes comical couple, bonded as they were to their decent but erratic and insecure only child.

  “Mr. Greene, sir!” Mrs. Jones would call to him at the door, a lot shorter than him but much louder. She always seemed to answer when he knocked. “Shoes off like a good boy, please. Appetite large, like a good boy too! Proceed to the kitchen and destroy what we have prepared for you. Young Walker is at it now.”

  Noah took the hug that she offered — a strange thing for him since hugging was something he had not experienced since childhood, did not remember, really, and barely knew how to do. Then he slipped off his shoes and slid down the polished hardwood floor in their small but immaculate bungalow, heading toward the enticing smell of bacon and eggs and other delights. The Joneses’ home was like a warm warren to him, full of little corridors that emerged into small rooms — kitchen, living room, dining room, and the hall toward the two bedrooms.

  “Hey!” said Mr. Jones, a big strapping fellow, the librarian at their school. “Noah without his ark!”

  “Funny only the first seven times,” said Walk. “Hey Noh, sit down! Engorge yourself!”

  “We shall make use of the vomitorium should we need it,” said Mr. Jones out of the side of his mouth, “and then eat more.”

  “Mrs. Jones heard that,” said Mrs. Jones appearing out of a warren-hall into the bright back kitchen.

  “It was a real thing, sweetheart,” said her husband, “in Roman times.”

  “So was death by gladiatorial combat, dear. Let us enjoy our meal with Noah without employing such rude allusions.”

  “Such a lovely talker,” said Mr. Jones as he gave his wife a kiss. “Science teachers are very sexy.”

  “Please,” said Walk bringing his fingers up to his lips as if he were in danger of throwing up.

  His mother then sat on his father’s lap and gave him a long kiss.

  “Take that,” said Mrs. Jones. “Oh!” she cried, noticing that Noah was sitting in front of an empty place setting. “Get him some food!” She leapt off her husband who leapt up too, apron still on, and retrieved a plate full of eggs, bacon, toast, and tomatoes from a counter and deposited it in front of Noah.

  “Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Jones.”

  “You are quite welcome my dear. You are the nicest young man Walker has ever had over here. Eat up.”

  Probably never had anyone but me, thought Noah.

  Walk’s parents kept saying those sorts of incredibly nice things to him, pushing him to eat, giving him hugs, complimenting him, as if they could sense something: that he needed all that. Noah took it in. Walk was different. He appeared oblivious.

  * * *

  “Not looking forward to English class,” Walker said as they left the house with both of their stomachs stretched from what they had loaded into themselves.10

  “Why?” Noah could not imagine loathing English class. From where he sat, second row from the back, he had a perfect view of Miranda Owens in profile.11

  “I cannot believe you even said that. I can sum up my dread in one word: Shakespeare. The most terrifying name in the English language.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Oh, yeah? Is that all you can say? Billy Shakespeare, dude, the most boring man who ever set foot on earth! In fact, I think he’s Satan’s child, hatched by the Dark Lord so teachers can terrorize kids in high school with the crap he wrote. That’s what we’re doing today. Remember? That friggin’ sleep-inducing play about the king and his daughters? Why does Mitchell even have him on the course? It’s supposed to be Twentieth Century Literature and here he springs Billy-boy on us. I don’t believe what he said about Shakespeare being ‘modern’ in a way and being the father of everything in literature now, and that he is going to show us how that’s true. He just wanted an excuse to torture us. How can anyone consider a single word of that vomit to be modern? It’s like it’s Martian or something. I’ve been considering faking an illness on his ‘Shakespeare Day’ ever since he brought up his evil idea, but Mom and Dad figured out my acting long ago. I don’t know if you had to go through any of Billy Shake’s yawners last year, but we did. The thing was, in grade ten it was only an introduction to his drivel, so we read a couple of poems and studied a scene from this snore called Hamet.”

  “Hamlet.”

  “Did you study it too?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  “You read it, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, some of it.”

  “Most of it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Man, I cannot figure you out. You probably read this whole King Lear12 thing too.”

  “Skimmed some, but got through a lot of it.”

  “And didn’t Mitchell say something about finishing the course with another Shakespeare play?”

  “The Tempest.”

  “Great. Maybe I’ll lick a toilet seat the week before and get a real illness.”

  “Relax.”

  “Relax? I couldn’t even get past the first page. I couldn’t understand a word!”

  “You don’t have to. Just let it flow. It’s beautiful stuff, really. Just let it flow and stop worrying about understanding all of it. It’s about the importance of the truth. It’s a cool story.”

  Walk stopped in his tracks and Noah didn’t realize it for a few seconds. When he turned back, Walk was staring at him.

  “Cool? What, are you, like, an alien?”

  It wasn’t something Noah would have said to anyone else, but it was okay to tell Walk things like this.

  “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  “All right, explain it to me. Now!”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Not the whole friggin’ meaning of the thing, just what happens, the CliffsNotes of the story.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’? Are you my friend or not?”

  “I am your friend, Walk, that’s why I am not going to explain it to you. Read it yourself. You can do it.”

  “I cannot do it!” He actually screamed that out. They had reached the main street, still lined by residential homes, big old ones owned by rich people, their school about ten minutes away. They had also begun to encounter a few pedestrians. In fact, from where Noah was standing, looking back at Walk again, he could see three girls, fairly popular ones, wearing black leggings and light tops in the freezing cold. They had looked up from their phones and were staring at Walk from behind, frowning, acting as if his uncool shout was typical for a jerk like him. Walk turned around and saw them. He froze. They passed by. Noah felt he needed to say something nice to him.

  “There’s a battle in it. You’ll like that,” he said quietly.

  The girls were out of earshot now. Noah and Walker started moving again.

  “A battle? Okay, who wins and how many people die? Do we get to see lots of blood?”

&n
bsp; “There’s a fool in it too.”

  “A fool? You mean, like a clown. So, it’s funny in places?”

  “Um … not sure I would say that.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “No. You need to read it. You can do it. Any kid can do it. You just have to try. Making an effort is important in life.”

  “Are you suddenly, like, some sort of self-help guru or something?”

  “No, I just think that people can do and be more than they think they can. The play talks about that too.”

  “Man, to you it talks about everything.”

  “Yeah, it sort of does. So, uh, so did Hamlet. And The Tempest is even better.”

  For a second, Noah thought Walk was going to slug him.

  * * *

  Miranda Owens looked particularly happy that day. Noah could remember that clearly. It seemed to him that she was sort of glowing, if that is at all possible.

  “I know that a number of you will not have read King Lear,” said Mr. Mitchell, “even though I asked you to start into it a week ago and to be finished by today.”

  Mitchell was like that all the time. He was down-to-earth, realistic about teenagers, and students liked him for it. “That’s okay … sort of. It is at least, shall I say, understandable. Shakespeare can be rather daunting. Really though, that’s just a surface impression. In his day, his plays were popular and the average person came to see them. They actually have all sorts of jokes in them, wordplay for average playgoers, some of them dirty jokes, to be honest.”

  There were a couple of snickers in the class.

  “So, remember that if you tried to read it and got flustered and just could not go on. Try it again and understand what you can; read it and try to get into the story. Remember what we said at the beginning of the year: Story. That is what matters in everything we talk about in this class, no matter how complicated the text. This is a great story. That is why it has lasted. All human beings like stories; every one of us. It is undeniable. Our own lives are stories. We all are protagonists in our own drama. Shakespeare understood that … every which way. It is the basis of everything he wrote and he was the greatest writer who ever lived.”

  Kids were shuffling in their seats, some looking up at the ceiling, others gawking at each other. Noah glanced over at Miranda. Her attention was locked onto Mr. Mitchell. Noah had been doing well in this class. He always did well in English. He had been getting nineties on everything he’d written for Mitchell so far. No one knew that, of course, not even Walk. Noah hadn’t spoken much in class. But at that moment, looking over at the incandescent Miranda Owens, seeing her fascinated by the words coming out of Mitchell’s mouth, thinking about what he’d said to Walker Jones about the importance of trying to improve yourself, he made a decision.

  “Can anyone tell me anything about King Lear?” asked Mitchell. “It doesn’t matter what you say or how much understanding of the text you have. Tell me anything. It will be good to hear whatever you say.”

  There was silence in the class. Miranda looked around. It was obvious that she wanted someone to speak up, that she didn’t want to be the one who held forth, again. She didn’t look as anxious as she often did and that was partly because of the nature of Mitchell’s question. He was giving the kids who didn’t understand the story, didn’t have a clue really, a chance to speak. It was like he was giving the groundlings, the ordinary people who stood on the ground at the Globe Theatre in London way back in the day and laughed at Shakespeare’s crude jokes, a chance to talk.

  Walk’s hand went up.

  “Yes, Walker?” asked Mitchell, looking pleased.

  “I like the battles, the action.”

  “Very good. So do I. Anything else?”

  Walk glanced at Noah. “The clown is good too.”

  “The clown? Do you mean the fool?”

  “Yeah, the fool, that’s right. He’s funny.”

  Mitchell paused. “Funny? Uh … I suppose, in a way, but he is much more than that — a whole lot more. Do you agree?”

  “Uh … yeah. He’s cool.”

  There were a few snickers. Mitchell sought the authors of that reaction and frowned at them. “Anyone else?”

  Constance put up her hand. “I like the fact that there are some women in the story, in key roles. That’s a rare thing in all these dead white guy stories we have to read from the days of the patriarchy … which is ongoing.” There were a couple of male groans in the class. “Even with the women having some good roles here, though, I don’t think they are respected enough. Parts of the play are a sort of boys’ club thing. There’s the king and then there are the daughters, but it is really the king we are focused on.”

  “Okay,” said Mr. Mitchell. “Interesting comment. I can tell you have put some thought into it. Now, can anyone tell me what happens in the story?”

  There was silence for a few seconds. Then Bruce thrust up his hand. He rarely answered anything.

  “Yes, Bruce. You don’t need to tell us everything; the first scene will be fine.”

  Bruce was shaking and his voice was quavering too.

  “W-We open in a k-kingdom long ago where a king, the aforementioned Mr. L-Lear, is thinking about being old and maybe passing on his crown. He asks his three d-daughters how much they l-love him and the first two b-bullshit him …”

  There was a roar of laughter.

  “Quiet!” shouted Mitchell, who had never raised his voice in class before. When there was silence, he smiled. “That’s fine, Bruce, you are absolutely correct, please go on.”

  But Bruce was shaking too much. Miranda stood up. She never did that. No one did. You sat to answer a question. She wanted the entire class’s attention on her, though, not on her poor shaking friend. This, in a snapshot, was Miranda Owens, and Noah sat transfixed.

  “Bruce is right,” she said, “and insightful. The two daughters do answer their father with bullshit.” There was dead silence in the class when that word came out of her mouth and she made sure she pronounced it clearly. Mr. Mitchell smiled again. “But Cordelia, the third and youngest daughter, doesn’t; she tells him the truth. He can’t handle it. The story goes on from there, an amazing tale of Lear casting out his daughter, cozying up to the ones who just want something from him, and then descending into drinking and rabblerousing. He is accompanied by his Fool, who keeps telling him what is really going on, and finally, he is involved in battle, yes, blind and distraught, saved at the end by realizations about life, and about how much his truthful daughter really loves him. It tells us about maturing, the wisdom of old age, or at least the wisdom we all should acquire then, by our experiences.” She sat down.

  In the ensuing silence, a quiet voice said, “Sir?”

  The new kid who had barely uttered a word over the first month or so of classes had his hand up. The kid who Mr. Mitchell knew had a way with stories but had never offered anything remotely like his essays in front of the class.

  “Yes, Noah?”

  “I noticed a few things in the text.”13

  “Go on.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Miranda turning in her seat to watch him.

  “Though I enjoyed the story itself, it is so much more than that. It is about an old man, yes, and wisdom, but more importantly it’s about vision. It’s about truly seeing others, cutting through the surface, the role-playing we all do, all of that, understanding others. I noticed, as I re-read it, how often Shakespeare uses the word ‘I’ or ‘eye’ or in some way references selfishness, vision, or sight. I also noticed that as the play progresses, the old king’s eyesight worsens, and in the end he is blind. It is only when he can’t see that he truly sees. It is only then that he encounters his daughter Cordelia … and truly sees her. I’m not sure this is a lesson to learn or anything like that — I don’t think Shakespeare is into that. It’s simply a truth.
Great art tells the truth.”

  Noah finished to another silence. Miranda Owens was staring at him, absolutely staring, and he knew it.

  “I … I,” said Mr. Mitchell, “I have never, in all my years teaching this text, noticed that. That is … that is amazing. Thank you, Noah. I mean that … thank you.”

  When all the other students had turned back to the front, Miranda was still looking at Noah. It took her a good ten seconds to turn around again at her desk.

  * * *

  As they left the class that day, she approached him.

  “Whoa,” said Walk into Noah’s ear. “She’s coming this way.”

  “Noah?” she said. She came right up close, her eyes looked right into his. He noticed that he was only an inch or two taller. “That was awesome.” And she put her hand on his arm for a second and then was gone.

  “Holy Moses,” said Walk. “Holy flippin’ Moses!”

  * * *

  8 I found out later that she actually does wear some. Rosie let it slip once that she puts a bit of makeup on her face to conceal things, imperfections I guess, and something on her lips too, see-through gloss that looks natural, looks awesome, actually.

  9 Referencing Poe’s “The Raven,” pub 1845, killer poem by a killer strange dude.

  10 I blame Mr. Jones for the five eggs I hoovered that day. I remember every one of them.

  11 Sorry. It’s the truth, though.

  12 The Tragedy of King Lear, first performed in 1606 in London, England. Man, that’s, like, way over 400 years ago and here we were talking about it in the streets! Pretty impressive.

  13 Sweating bullets and nearly crapping my pants at this point.

  3

  A Meeting of Mind and Body

  Noah was surprised when he heard that Miranda was on the basketball team, since that isn’t where you usually expect to find “A” students.14 She also didn’t hang out with the jocks and never wore any hoops gear. Sweatpants and logos were not her thing. She didn’t act like a jock, talk like one, or move like one. Well, maybe she moved like one. She had a different way of walking, at least it seemed to Noah that she did. She seemed to move effortlessly, gracefully. She never appeared to be showing off anything about her appearance — her body, either. She was always wearing those loose-fitting clothes. She favored sweaters and relaxed-fit jeans, and rarely even bared her arms. She dressed for comfort.