Kissing Michael Allenbaugh by Elizabeth She

---I’m late for class and I’d forgotten my notebook. I can’t go back or I’ll miss the entire lecture. I jog through the halls, scrabbling in my pockets for paper. All I find are the thin white bookmarks the library uses for my holds.
---Easing the door to the lecture hall open, I slip inside and stand quietly until my eyes adjust to the dark. Good, a slide show. He’ll never know I was late if I can find the sign-in sheet.
---I see the back of Michael’s head halfway down the raked seats. No one sits near him. I sit in the first empty seat in the top row, dig out a pen from my pants pocket, and start taking notes on the bookmarks. Sibelius, Finnish composer, 1865-1957. Pachelbel, German composer, 1653-1706. Standard stuff.
---The sign-in sheet finally makes its way back to the top row. The girl on my left signs in with a purple pen, then hands me the list. I scan it and find my name already there, after Michael’s. I pass the list to my right, another girl, another purple pen. The teacher drones on: Handel, Nibelung, Telemann, etc.
---Art class is next, something I actually look forward to. As a class project, Michael designed a huge mural in a home for abused kids. It features dragons, fairies, rainbows, and happy, happy children. I get depressed every time we work on it. The administrators only allow us to paint when the children are “otherwise engaged.” Originally the kids helped, but one of the boys knocked over all the paint cans in a fit of rage and tried to force his brother to eat yellow, so they changed the rules. Acting out, they called it. I said let them make the biggest mess they’ve ever seen then have them clean it up, but I was overruled. Michael said I was lucky they let me come back at all.
---Interminable lecture over, I stay in my seat and wait for Michael to find me.
---“Thanks,” I say.
---He raises his eyebrows. As we walk up the aisle and out of the lecture hall, he passes me a sheaf of paper - his notes and a set of handouts.
---“Thanks,” I say again. “I’ll make a copy.”
---He waves his hand, forget about it. He has art next, too, but a more advanced class. He’s been painting since he could hold a brush. I only got the bug last year, after Maureen died.
---“See you,” I say, and stop at my locker. Michael never keeps anything in his locker. He carries everything he needs, or runs back to his apartment, two blocks from school.
---I shove Michael’s notes on the top shelf, and grab my smock and drawing pad. Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I shut the door with a clang.
By the end of the day, I’m ragged. I long for a bath, but it’ll hours before I get there. I still have to work.
---Jennifer hands me a stack of towels when I get to the Rec. Center. “Teachers’ locker room is out,” she says, so I take them upstairs. The whole college -- students, staff and faculty -- share the workout equipment and swimming pool, but staff and faculty have a separate locker room. Ours is nicer, though, bigger and cleaned more regularly, probably because the janitorial staff have it in for faculty. Class differences, maybe. We always have plenty of towels and soap, and the mirrors cast spotless reflections.
---The teachers’ area doesn’t have many mirrors, at least not on the women’s side. John works the men’s side, and I see him skulking through the men’s sauna door to check the rocks and make sure nobody’s in there wearing plastic pants, trying to melt the pounds off.
---Charmaine’s at the counter reading. She puts down her book and smiles when she sees me. “Chile, it’s about time!”
---“I just came on,” I say.
---“I know. I ain’t mad at you. I called for towels two hours ago.”
---I mumble something about understaffing.
---“Why you making excuses? Ain’t your gym,” says Charmaine.
---“Hallelujah,” I say.
---“Praise the Lord,” says Charmaine, and we both crack up.
---“What you readin’?” I ask.
---“Biology.” She makes a face. “Woman’s got a bee up her ass, always quizzing us. I thought pop quizzes went out in high school.”
---I make supportive noises, though I’ve never had a pop quiz in my life, unless you count Adam’s proposal. I failed that test.
---“Gotta go,” I say.
---“Catch you later,” says Charmaine, already back in the book.
---I go downstairs and relieve Cara at the equipment checkout counter.
---“Two canoes out,” she says, hopping off the stool. “Due back in an hour. Doubt they’ll make it. Full moon tonight.” She grabs her purse from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. “Three basketballs out, too. It’s all on the list.” She points at the brown clipboard and I pick it up. Michael has one of the basketballs, which surprises me. I don’t know why, nothing should surprise me about Michael.
---Three hours later the canoes come back. Faculty has them both, so I don’t dock them. Besides, they’re lucky those things float.
---“Thanks, Marla,” says Dr. McKeon.
---“Marta,” I correct.
---Oily smile disappearing, he squints at my name tag, then turns and walks away.
---I call Jennifer to help me put the canoes away. After that it’s time to lock up.
---Two of the basketballs are still out. I hear one of them on the upper court in a game of Horse. I pick up the mike and make the announcement. “The Rec. Center will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please check in all equipment immediately and exit the building.”
---A basketball starts bouncing toward me, louder and louder. Down the hall, Quincy and Charisse are laughing and dribbling back and forth. She tutors him between games. As Charmaine says, “Don’t nobody handle a ball the way Charisse do.” Charmaine and Charisse are twins, though you can’t tell by looking. Charmaine will punch you if you call her shorty.
---Still a ways back from the counter, Charisse steals the ball from Quincy and shoots it straight at me. She grins when I catch it. “Not bad for a white girl,” she says. “Not bad for an Injun,” I reply, to which she laughs and heads outside, Quincy following.
---Everything on the list is checked in except Michael’s basketball. I change the code on the clipboard from four hour checkout to overnight, and forge an illegible signature. Then I lock up the counter and make the rounds. Sauna off, showers off, swimming pool empty.
---There’s something in the shadows under the lifeguard stand. I walk around the pool for a closer look. The missing basketball. I call into the men’s locker room, “Michael?”
---John comes out and sees me with the ball. “You rang?”
---“Anybody in there?” I ask.
---“Nope, all clear, massah.”
---“Funny guy,” I say.
---I unlock my counter again and check in the ball, scribbling out the overnight approval. Michael is usually so careful and good about everything. Too careful and good. Well, the ball is back. I’ll call him when I get home.
---Michael and I haven’t always attended the same college. Sophomore year he went to Antioch and studied French and nature drawing. We e-mailed sporadically. In a goofy mood one day, I wrote:

---Hey Meester Allenba-
---I am so happee to be enjoying spreeng brake in thees faire ceetee. I am ownlee werkeeng an reeding an rideeng my bike (now that shee ees feexed).
---Pleeze to go see the muvee “Ma Vie en Rose.” Eet ees een yor langwaj and eet ees thee best muvee! You must love it also.
---Last week wen my bike shee fell doun, I evree day did wok to werk. 4 miles, sumtymes 5 eef I go to market. I find eet so eemportunt to slow wunself doun, to look at thee cat who needs tayle fur, to noteese thee trees makeeng thee flowares and to pleeze yor knoze by yuseeng it on thee blossums. But I get tyred to walkeeng on conkreet so I am glad to no my bike shee ees bettair now.
---Frum my reed yor lettair, I deedoos yu are happee, know? I hope for veree mush thees bee troo.
---Yor frend,
---Marta
---PS Wen shee ees yor spreeng brake? And wat toun yu ar close too? I must to see on map of stait.

---He replied a few weeks later, apologizing for being busy. He included a children’s story he’d written about a two-tailed pig name Murphy, a hen named Barbee, and a helpful rhesus monkey named Marta.
---Michael doesn’t answer the phone when I call, but that’s not unusual. The ringer’s been broken for three months, and he hasn’t bothered to fix it. I leave a message and go on about my business: studying, eating, and sleeping.
---He isn’t in class the next day, nor the day after that. I take copious notes in the classes we share, and leave messages on his machine every night. I’m not too worried, he’s done this before. Sometimes the world gets too much for him and he takes off. It’s not the best weather for camping, which is what he usually does, but he’s an adult. He can cope.
---It’s not until the music composition prof. reminds us of next week’s midterm that I begin to worry. Michael always keeps up his grades. He wouldn’t want to miss a crucial test. I realize I haven’t seen him for four days. After work, I walk over to his apartment.
---He used to have a roommate, an engineering student, but they had a falling out. I can’t imagine living with Michael. He’s so clean.
---After knocking on his door to no avail, I go back outside to look up at his window. The curtains are closed. No lights. I ring the manager’s bell. No answer. While I’m standing there debating whether to leave a note or not, one of the residents comes down the hall. I recognize him from the laundry room. “Hey,” I say.
---“Hey,” he says. “What’s up?”
---“Not much,” I say. “Actually, I was wondering, ah, have you seen Michael Allenbaugh? My friend? He lives in 2B.”
---He zips his denim jacket closed and pulls on a pair of fuzzy green mittens. “Yeah, I know him. No, I haven’t seen him lately. Y’all have a fight?” He smiles.
---“No,” I blush. “It’s not like that. He’s just a friend, you know.”
---“Yeah?”
---“Yeah,” I say. “I’m just worried. He hasn’t been in class.”
---He shrugs, “Sorry.” Cold air pushes in from outside when he opens the door. “Good luck.”
---“Thanks,” I mutter. I walk back upstairs and knock again. Nothing. I knock on the door opposite, then try every door on the second floor. Where the hell is everybody? Sometimes I hate city life. I give Michael’s door one last kick on the way out, then head for the grocery store. When I get home an hour later, there’s a message from Betty Shackleton, manager of the Spring Town Apartments. I’m listed as Michael’s next of kin.
---Before Michael transferred to Antioch, he and I spent the summer as teaching assistants at an arts academy for pre-teens. We worked really hard, 9-4, every weekday. I was assigned to the performance poetry teacher, who had an expansive idea of poetry and poets. We took field trips to museums, tree houses, gardens. Once we went to Oyster Bay to watch the boats come in.
---Michael assisted a music class in the morning and an animation class in the afternoon. In addition to working at the Academy, he had a part-time job as “talent” for a promotions company. One week he passed out airline vouchers, another, cups of cranberry juice. He always had something or three going on.
---The arts academy was three weeks long with a Parents Day performance at the end of it. All the poetry kids were hyped up to write the most outrageous poems they could think of. One girl even dyed her hair pink to match the pink tone of her poem. The music class practiced the James Bond theme, which drove Michael nuts, and the animators made a short film.

---The day before Parents Day, Michael and I worked late, hanging artwork and lights in the theatre with the other teachers and assistants. The staff called out for pizzas, and when they finally got there, around 7 o’clock, we all sat down and took a break. I was exhausted. I was dating a musician at the time, and we seemed to fight whenever we saw each other. I don’t know why we didn’t call it off. Sexual chemistry, I guess. Plus I didn’t have the energy to break up. I spent the weekends earning food money as a performance artist at The Art Bar. Twenty bucks a night, plus dinner.
---I hadn’t talked to Michael much until we sat down to eat. He looked radiant. I smiled at him. “Why are you so happy?”
---“Isn’t this great, Marta?”
---“What.” I ate a slice of garlic veggie in three bites.
---“All this,” he gestured. “The kids, the teachers, the Academy. Everything.”
---“It’s okay,” I said.

---“Okay! It’s more than okay, Marta. This is what life is supposed to be.” He got up to get a soda from a tub filled with ice. “Want one?”
---“Root beer,” I answered. Not for the first time, I wondered if Michael was bipolar. But why assume, if someone’s ecstatic, that he’s sick? Is happiness a disease to be cured? “Tell me more,” I said.
---“You know how Janice talks about joy, and following your internal voice? your artistic vision?”
---Janice taught Foundations of the Artistic Life at our school. We idolized her. “Yes.” I took the root beer he held out.
---“Well, that’s the theory, here’s the practice.”
---I looked around at all the tired, smiling people. Nobody got overtime for this, but everybody in the Academy was helping out, even the attendance assistant. “Unifying theme?” I asked.
---“The kids,” said Michael. “That’s why we’re all working our butts off. The next generation has got to be healthier and happier than this one.”
---“I’m not unhappy,” I said.
---“No?” he asked. He knew about Adam. He knew about my father. He knew too much.
---I got up and walked over to Kathy, the event organizer.
---“Go home, people,” she announced before I got to her. “We’re done.” Everybody hooted and hollered and threw empty pop cans in the air, which they immediately picked up. Somehow Michael was next to me. “Need a ride home?”
---I looked at him. Tall and gangly, he hadn’t grown into his height or body yet. His eyes were pale blue tinged with green, and freckles dotted his angular nose. His lips were thin, but kind, though he didn’t smile often. On impulse, I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thanks,” I said.
---He raised an eyebrow.
---I picked up my bag and hoisted it over my shoulder. “I feel like walking,” I said when he jangled his keys. “No offense.”
---“None taken,” he replied.
---“See you tomorrow,” I said, and he nodded.
---I thought about that kiss all the way home. How his skin felt soft as chamois, how I closed my eyes right before contact, how he smelled of paint and dust and sweat and joy, how his mouse-colored hair brushed my eyelashes.
---When I got home, Adam was out. His note said to join him at the Kitty Klub. I looked at my lips in the bathroom mirror: no scorch marks. I brushed my teeth, changed into a nightshirt and went to bed.
---I call Betty Shackleton, but she’s out. I leave a message, then run all the way back to the Spring Town Apartments. There’s a fire truck parked in front of the building, and paramedics. A police car screeches around the corner, lights and siren on.
---“What happened?” I ask the first person I come across. A firefighter.
---“Step back,” she orders. “Step away from the door.”
---“The manager called me,” I tell her. “My friend -- is something wrong? What happened?”
---She ignores me.
---The green mitten guy stands next to the driveway, smoking.
---“Sorry about your friend,” he says when I walk up. “Bummer.”
---I don’t scream, but I’m close. “What happened? Please. The manager called me.”
---Mitten man nods at the front door. The paramedics are bringing out a gurney. With a body. Covered by a sheet. Movies have taught me that he’s dead. Nobody pulls a sheet over a living face.
---I can’t move. I can’t breathe, though Charmaine says breathing is an involuntary function.
---“Hung himself,” says mitten man succinctly. “Plumber found him.”
---I cover my ears with my hands and walk over to the paramedics. “I’m his next of kin. Marta.”
---A policeman drives me to the hospital, following the ambulance. This is a familiar convoy, though it’s been sixteen years since the last one. I was four when I rode with my dad behind an ambulance carrying my brother. Jan was three. He didn’t make it either.
---A bereavement counselor meets me outside the morgue. “Marta James?” she asks. I nod. “Come with me.” She doesn’t pat my back or try to hold my hand. Much easier to hold it together without sympathy.
---I fill out several forms and show ID. Jennifer shows up, and I remember that her mother works in this hospital. She brings me a cup of coffee, which I don’t drink, and a cinnamon roll, which I promptly vomit up.
---Michael has a brother somewhere, Jason. He’ll have to be told. The bereavement counselor sends me home with Jennifer after making an appointment with me for tomorrow.
---Jennifer doesn’t say much in the car, just drops me off in front of my apartment. “I’ll tell Susie what happened,” she says. Susie is the Rec. Center supervisor.
---I nod.
---“Get some sleep,” she says. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
---I nod again, can’t seem to stop nodding.
---While loading him into the ambulance, Michael’s hand had flopped out from under the sheet. It had looked like he was waving me closer, as if he had a secret to impart. “Marta,” he whispered. “Marta,” says Jennifer. “You want me to call someone?” I look at her. We aren’t friends really, just acquaintances. Her eyebrows come together when she frowns, a black caterpillar. “Marta?” “No thanks,” I say. “Thanks,” I repeat, and wave my hand. “For --”
---“No problem. See you tomorrow.”
---I open the car door. “Right,” I say. “Tomorrow.”
---She waits until I unlock the front door, then drives off. I stand there for a minute listening to the hum of cars on Broadway, the hiss of a bus rumbling by, a bird calling out into the night. A mockingbird, sounding like a crow.
---Michael once told me that I was insensitive. We were walking in the country, one of our mental health excursions out of the city. He always found off-the-beaten-path hikes for us to try. We’d driven about an hour in his mom’s car to get to this one, and Michael promised a waterfall at the end of the trail.
---We’d been walking single file for about an hour, criss-crossing a clear cut, Michael in front. We came to a yellow Forest Service gate leading to a fire road. Should be an easier hike here on in. I was about to duck under when I saw the look on his face. I turned to see what he was staring at. Two yellow posts held the gate up. Near the right one lay a horse head. It took a minute to register that it was real. The body was missing, only the head remained, staring at nothing. Extra skin and fur draped its neck, as if skinned off its flanks, but there wasn’t much blood. A piece of bone poked out, a surreal hobbyhorse. I looked at Michael. He was pale and shaking.
---“Let’s go,” I said, stepping back the way we’d come. “Let’s get out of here.”
---Michael stood there, looking at the head. Tufts of blondish hair stuck out of its ears.
---I looked away. A squirrel chattered from a nearby evergreen. When I looked at Michael again, he was crying. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him do that. His body jerked as he tried to catch his breath. I ducked under the gate and grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
---He pulled his hand away. “Doesn’t it bother you? Doesn’t anything ever bother you?”
---I ignored him, grabbed his hand again, and dragged him under the gate and down the path, away from the horse head. As soon as it was out of sight, I lead him to a fallen log. “Sit.”
---Michael wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Sorry.”
---“Don’t worry about it,” I said, handing him a clean handkerchief. “Blow.”
---We sat there for awhile, neither of us speaking. I saw another squirrel, this one leaping from tree to bush to tree, scolding us. My parents have a bird feeder back home, hanging from a cherry tree. One day I saw a squirrel leap into it, grab a mouthful of seeds while it swayed, then leap back out, onto a tree limb. Fearless and fast. I didn’t shoo it away, just watched the high wire act. Working without a net.
---“So much for the waterfall,” said Michael.
---“We could still go.”
---He stared at me as if he’d never seen me before. He pointed toward the gate, and the head. “That’s the only way I know to get there.”
---We hiked back down to the car, nonstop and single file, Michael leading the way.
---My answering machine tape is full by the time I unlock my apartment door and step inside. I debate waiting until morning, but decide against it.
---Betty Shackleton is the first and third message, repeats of the earlier one. I never did see her there. In between is my mom. She works nights in the dispatcher’s office.
---“Marta? Are you there? Please pick up. I have some news about your friend. I’ll try again.”
---Three more messages from her, identical to the first, except for her rising pitch. Fourteen hang-ups.
---It’s after midnight, but if I don’t call, she will. Bet on it.
---“Hi Mom. Yes, I’m fine. Tired. Yes, I will, tomorrow.”
---She insists on taking me to the appointment with the bereavement counselor. “You shouldn’t go alone. I’ll pick you up.”
---“Fine,” I say. “Good night.”
---I turn off the phone, then flick off the lights and lie in bed, on top of the covers. It’s cold tonight, supposed to drop below freezing. My window faces the building across the alley, but there’s a visible patch of sky, and a star or two. I think about the time I kissed Michael. He hadn’t pushed me away or joked about it. On our next hike, he showed me a tall pine tree. “Rotten to the core,” he said. It looked perfectly healthy, green branches reaching to the sun. He pointed out the woodpecker holes, all up and down the trunk. “It’s just a matter of time,” he said.
---I touch my cheek where I had kissed him. He had blushed that night, but remained silent. We never mentioned it.
---I push my shoes off and crawl under the covers, rolling over to face the window. It’s open the barest crack. Enough so that I hear the mockingbird again, or maybe it’s another one. Sounding like a dove.