The Boys of McKinley House

Chapter Five—W.W.S.D.?

-

LOVE IS A VESPERTINE BLOOM said the graffiti carved under one of the sinks in the bathroom at Rampion House, and the girl smiled, because even though it wasn't yet eight o'clock she already had something to add to her book.

Her name was Elisabeth: not Betsy or Lisa or Lizzy or Beth; not Betty; not Ellie; not Bess. Her name was Elisabeth, plain Elisabeth, Elisabeth Ami Dufant, and with a name like that, she couldn't have been anything but an absolute through-and-through romantic. Ever since she was twelve years old, she had been compiling a list of things love was like; she wrote them down every night in a water-stained black composition book. Love is like falconry. Love is like oxygen. Only love is real. She had over four hundred by now.

And it was only at Rampion House, she thought to herself with a smile, that you would find words like that carved behind the copper pipes; even inside one of the boys' bathrooms, in a school that prided itself so much in turning mere youths into splendid, clear-thinking young men, about the most romantic thing your could find scratched into the paint was REXANNE KRAKOWSKI BITES THE BIG ONE. Thank God, Elisabeth thought, for girls, and their love ises.

Elisabeth had come be under the sink this morning, looking up at the porcelain and holding onto the pipes, because of Benny Kittridge. At six-thirty in the morning, Miss Kittridge had decided to take a bath. Elisabeth had been brushing her teeth when Benny strolled in, feet bare, hair loose, yawning prettily, and proceeded to commandeer the chipped enamel bathtub by the window, the only one in Rampion House. She had steamed up the whole room and then stayed in the tub for nearly an hour, sitting there as if she was just inviting you to look at her.

And it was because of this that Elisabeth ended up washing her hair in the sink, and it was because of this that when Ms. Larsen, the house mother, banged into the bathroom singing "To Dream the Impossible Dream," Elisabeth was startled enough to bang her head against the faucet, experience a rush of blood to the head, and end up sitting on the floor, clinging to the edge of the sink and staring at LOVE IS A VESPERTINE BLOOM. Not that either Benny or Ms. Larsen seemed to notice any of this.

"Oh, Benjamina, Darling!" Ms. Larsen cried, swooping down and drawing a chair up next to the tub where Benny was soaking; Ms. Larsen herself was only the slightest bit more decently clothed. She had been a stage actress and B-movie star in the sixties and seventies, and still prided herself in her figure, which was, admittedly, something to write home about; even though she was well past forty, she still slept in filmy little negligees that left little to the imagine, and often could be seen going around in them at all hours of the morning and night; anyone who ever lived in Rampion House could probably remember Ms. Larsen, wearing a black lace teddy that left little to the imagination, sticking her head into their room to tell them, in a flurry of red hair and Chanel no. 22, to please get a move on their Bhagavad Gita reading because they wouldn't get far in life without a good education, now would they? Ms. Larsen herself had dropped out of the Oberlin Conservatory after a year to go to New York City and become a chorus girl on Broadway.

This morning, she was wearing a chiffon robe trimmed with blue feathers, blue satin mules, and very little else."We haven't talked since you came back to school, my dear," she was saying to Benny. "How are things? Are you going to try out for the musical this fall?"

"If I have time," Benny said dismissively, rubbing her wash cloth behind her ears. "I'm going to be awfully busy this fall, actually, Ms. Larsen."

"Darling, how many times do I have to tell you? Call me Peggy!" (No one else in the entire school was allowed to call Ms. Larsen Peggy.) "We're putting on Cabaret this semester, Benjamina dear, and I think there's the perfect part for you."

"Oh?" Coolly. "Which part?"

"Well, Sally Bowles, of course!"

Well, the female lead, of course, Elisabeth thought to herself with more than a little venom as she pulled herself up to her feet. That much went without saying. She applied a little toothpaste to her brush. No one had ever fought plaque and gingivitis with such aggression.

Margaret Larsen taught drama and voice, and Benny Kittridge was her favorite student. No one knew why. Benny couldn't sing, couldn't dance, couldn't act—or, rather, she could act: she acted beautifully whenever she wanted something, whether that was keeping a library book for an extra two weeks or getting a boy into her bed. Her consistent 3.8 grade point average was perfect evidence of this: at the end of every year, her textbooks were resold to the school as pristine as they had been that fall, not a single page creased, not a single passage underlined. Benny was a brilliant actress when it served her own needs, but put her up on stage and she went blank. She could remember her lines, but that was about it; you would have an easier time doing a scene with an Irish setter.

Nonetheless, she was always cast in the lead. Last year, the drama department had put on Amadeus in the fall and Bye Bye Birdy in the spring; Benny had played Constanze Mozart in the first and Kim McAfee in the second. To each she brought nothing more than a certain luminous, pale beauty which admittedly translated into an undeniable stage presence, and the most leaden rendition of "How Lovely to be a Woman" that anyone had ever heard. But Ms. Larsen loved her, and probably always would. Maybe she saw something of herself in Benny. After all, people back at Oberlin still told stories about the buxom redhead who used to table dance in a black vinyl catsuit.

But regardless of Ms. Larsen's penchant for playing favorites, Elisabeth Ami Dufant had plans. She had been practicing "Perfectly Marvelous" all summer and she had no doubts that she would blow Benny Kittridge out of the water at the audition. Whether that meant she would get the part or not was debatable. But still, she thought as she padded down the hallway toward her room, water splattering the linoleum as she rubbed her hair with Benny's towel: stranger things have happened.

-

"Well," Carrie said, "I guess stranger things have happened."

"Does that mean you believe me?"

"No…"

Racetrack sighed. It figured. He finally did something to prove his masculinity, and everyone thought he was lying.

He had thought that telling Carrie, his co-anchor for the morning show at KUKE, the school radio station, would be a good start, mainly because he didn't think she actuallyleft the recording booth often enough to tell someone. Hardly anybody at Caldwell even knew about her existence; she looked down at the lawn through the window and watched as their all teenage dramas and mating rituals played out while she remained blissfully uninvolved. She said she preferred it that way, and frankly, Race couldn't blame her. Still, he worried about her sometimes. He wondered if she ever slept.

"Is it really that impossible for you to believe that I might have scored?"

"Well…" she paused. "No. Not impossible, I guess, just…well, you and Sylvy Golino?"

"Hard to imagine her knocked up, isn't it?"

"Not really," Carrie said. "I just always imagined it as an immaculate conception, that's all."

"Right."

"Also, if I ever thought you being with anyone, it was probably Benny Kittridge. From what I hear she's not at all particular."

"How do you know about Benny?"

"Everybody knows about Benny."

"But does everybody know I'm not getting any from Benny?"

"A great many."

They both managed to keep straight faces for about five seconds before they burst out laughing. "Carrie," Race said, "I think you might need to get out more."

"What, and end up like you?" As the single that was playing ended and the stylus slipped free of the last groove, Carrie slipped on her headphones and leaned forward to speak into the microphone.

"Good morning, Caldwell!" the radio voice went. "The birds are singing, the sun is shining—well, behind that thick wall of rain clouds, anyway—and you've made it through your first week at Caldwell. It's time to celebrate. So let me lay one on you from a real twentieth-century master who's sure to bring a smile to your face, in honor of my good good friend Mr. Racetrack Higgins, and you just sit back, relax, and listen to the teachings of KUKE."

It was always anyone's guess what Carrie would put on in the morning; her tastes ran from Carl Orff to "Sister Ray." Race leaned back and listened, and after a minute recognized the singer on the record Carrie had put on as a certain purveyor of desperate New Jersey love-rock. He was well trained to know. Springsteen albums were about the only things Rexanne ever listened to.

"Then I got Mary pregnant and man, that was all she wrote, and for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat," Bruce sang. "We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest: no wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle, no flowers, no wedding dress."

"You are a cruel and brilliant person," Racetrack muttered.

Carrie just smiled and looked at the back of the record cover. "Have you told anyone yet?"

"I was kinda practicing on you, to be honest."

She nodded. "You might want to work on your delivery, then."

"You really don't believe me?"

"No, no, it's not that I don't, it's …" Carrie paused. "I think I'm just gonna wait until she starts to show a little, before I say anything, is all."

For the last week, Racetrack had been working on the right way to tell people about Sylvy. He was worried about his friends and his family, but what he dreaded most was talking to Izzy. He stood in front of the mirror every morning, knotting his tie as he tried to figure out how to break it to his sister that he had ruined the life of an innocent girl.

"Iz, have you ever done something that you later regretted?"

"Iz, sometimes the people we love disappoint us…"

"Izzy? Guess what? You get to be an aunt!"

He had counted on everything from shock to anger to tears, but for no one to even believe him seemed like an even worse reaction.

"What do you think I should say?" he asked.

"How about, 'hey guys, I knocked up the religion professor's daughter, what do you think of that?'"

And Racetrack nodded—of course. She was right; it was the only way to go. When you've gotten a girl pregnant, the one way you might really redeem yourself is to think: "What Would Springsteen Do?"

-

David S. Jacobs was fascinated by history, talented in math, and dutiful at the natural sciences. He had gotten A's all through high school, and enjoyed learning more than anything else, at least according to the essay he wrote, titled "Why I Enjoy Learning More Than Anything Else," which he sent into Caldwell as part of his application. But English was what he loved, and the English classroom was where he always felt truly at home; he would have called it his passion, if he had thought of himself as the kind of person who had things like that.

And so he was very, very happy when he found out that English was one of Caldwell's best programs, and his teacher, Professor Denton, was one of the best in the school. He remembered, sitting in the English 11 classroom in Scott House, looking out the window as the fog rose from the center lawn, English class at P.S. 118 with Mrs. Pancake. In one year they had faked their way, in class, through Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Like a strange pregnancy, those nine months had given birth to a lot of failing grades; David had the lingering suspicion that Mrs. Pancake had given him an A simply because he was the only student in the class who knew how to say "D'Urbervilles" right.

This morning, instead of diagramming sentences or arguing about what a petard actually was (a discussion which had taken a week to get resolved in Mrs. Pancake's class), they were talking about art and its necessity, following a comment by Oscar Delancey about how, in his opinion, poetry was about the most useless thing in the world, and he didn't think it was worth anyone's trouble.

"Man creates art," Denton said, "in an attempt to answer the unanswerable questions in life. The most magnificent creations we can ever conceive of, whether they're made of marble, oils, or ink, are nothing more than a mortal's fragile attempt to understand the universe. I'm not saying writing, or any art, answers all questions, of course, because it doesn't. But there are some things we as humans will never know—"is there life after death?" "Does love last forever?" "Does God exist?" "Why am I here?" "Why they don't make pineapple Jell-O anymore?"

"Oh, I know the answer to that one," Kid Blink said, perking up.

"Really?" Denton asked. "Then please, Mr. Gustafson, enlighten us. We've got a few minutes of class left."

And so Kid Blink told his story:

WHY THEY DON'T MAKE PINEAPPLE JELL-O ANYMORE

A story of horror, loss, and confusion, and the death of an American dessert

Once upon a time two little boys named Bengt and Nicholas were out in the first boy's backyard, playing a wholesome, all-American game of lawn darts. Babysitting them that afternoon was a lovely young girl named Betsy True, who dreamed of moving to New York City and becoming a famous actress. That afternoon, Betsy was in the kitchen making pineapple Jell-O, Nicholas's favorite dessert. When the at last the Jell-O was nice and set and beautifully gelatinized, fragrant with the smell of the pineapple fields of Hawaii, Betsy opened the window and called to the boys, her voice clear and pure as a bell, two fateful words that would change their lives forever—Jell-O time!

Unfortunately, Betsy had caught them at a crucial moment of the game: Nicholas was about to throw his lawn dart, and such was his excitement at the prospect of pineapple Jell-O, his dart strayed from its target and went, instead, straight into Bengt's left eye

Bengt survived. His eye did not. Betsy developed a nervous condition in which she would wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, the words "refrigerate until firm" on her parched lips. Bengt gained an eye patch and a new name. And Bengt's mother, a woman far too beautiful and kind to have a name like "Gertrude," sued Kraft, Jell-O's parent company, for the loss of her son's eye. The settlement they awarded her was enough to buy a new house and car, treatment for both Betsy's nerves and Bengt's eye, pay for college for Bengt, Nicholas, and Betsy, and have enough money for a vacation besides. (Gertrude decided avoiding a tropical locale would be best for all of them, and so they went camping in Alaska for two weeks instead, and a good time was had by all.)

Betsy eventually made a full recovery, and, after attending the Juilliard School's Drama Division, became a successful stage actress in New York City. Bengt (now Kid Blink), whose left eye hadn't even been his favorite, anyway, decided to keep the patch instead of getting a glass eye put in, and could owe much of his later successes with girls to the dangerous edge it gave him. Bengt's mother didn't have to work for PBS anymore. All in all, one boy losing an eye brought many people happiness, except for one thing: in the media explosion that followed, Jell-O, shamed, removed pineapple indefinitely from its flavor lineup. And not a day went by that Kid Blink didn't look back, and regret his responsibility in that small piece of joy and happiness—a translucent piece of gelatin, the smell of faraway pineapple fields—being taken out of the world forever.

THE END.

"That was beautiful," Denton said, wiping a tear from his eye. Oscar seemed to go into a coughing fit; he wouldn't be able to talk to anyone for the rest of the day.

"And almost the entire thing is true," Mush said with a smile.

"I think we all need a little time to ourselves," Denton said. "Class dismissed early. Don't get used to it, boys." He turned around and began to rearrange some papers on his desk, looking terribly focused on the task at hand as the students filed out of the room.

At the end of his first week at Caldwell, David had realized, maybe for the first time in his life, that there was more to be learned outside of the classroom than there was inside it. He felt like he could spend a whole year in McKinley house just learning the anthropology, the stories and histories of the people at this school, and without going to class once he could learn enough to fill an entire book.

Of course it went without saying that he would never actually do something like that. He had to get into Columbia, after all.

Still, what he had heard fascinated him: Skittery's great nervous breakdown the spring of his freshman year, which David still didn't fully believe had happened; the Benny Kittridge museum; Professor Kloppman's decades-old, yet-to-be-finished biography of Abraham Lincoln, rumored to be seven volumes long, although no one had been allowed to see it in years; Ms. Larsen's stint as the hostess of a late-night horror movie show in Cincinnati before she came to the school. And the varied and sordid history of the Kelly children, the youngest of whom, Jack, lived down the hall from David's room, although David had yet to see him. There was Jamie Kelly, whose name still made the older girls at Rosemary swoon, and Rexanne Krakowski's thin body shudder; Boo Boo Kelly, the only girl, who had transferred to the Dalton school for her senior year at the same time that an English professor quietly resigned, the school choosing not to release his reasons for leaving the school; Chris Kelly, who had undergone a massive project to christen every classroom at Caldwell with his girlfriend Sunny; and Theodore Kelly, the oldest, who was currently a successful lawyer at Milbank Tweed, and did his best to distance himself from his family legacy.

It fascinated David, more than he would have liked to admit. When your father is a barber, you tend to take an interest in the excesses of the rich. He imagined Jack Kelly as a sophisticated, rebellious son who was out to prove that he was worth more than justhis family name; he would be intelligent and embittered and philosophical.David wondered when they would meet.

But David S. Jacobs had homework to do. And so, while everyone else on his floor went out to the Ironside with Race, who apparently had something very important to say, David, who doubted that whatever Racetrack had to say could be more important than Biology, stayed in his room with his science textbook as the sky outside went from gray to black. At exactly eight forty-one, he set his book down, and leaned back against the wall; he could hear every sound in the building. Walls contracting, faucets dripping, wind rattling an unlatched window. He was tired and content and at the same time felt more alone than he had in his entire life. It was time to brush his teeth.

David S. Jacobs was a strong believer in the importance of good oral hygiene, and he knew that even at Caldwell Academy, a school so dedicated to turning mere youths into splendid, clear-thinking young men, too many could go astray from the just and righteous path. The just and righteous path had three steps: brushing, flossing, and visiting the dentist every six months. If this path was followed, David was sure, then life would never get too complex, or too impossible to manage, and everything would turn out fine in the end. David followed the just and righteous path. His bicuspids were so perfect that they made some people believe in a higher power; his gums were like Greek temples.

And so, whenever he was feeling lost in life, as if he was alone in the world, he got his toothbrush, and his toothpaste, and his floss, and he brushed his teeth. Even if everything in his life was wrong, at least he could be secure in the knowledge that he was preventing cavities.

The bathrooms at Thaw were small and dark, and had been furnished during the years when avocado and goldenrod were popular colors. They were unabashedly hated. The whole thing wouldn't have been as bad if it wasn't common knowledge that over at Rosemary the girls had claw footed tubs and big, sunny windows looking out onto the orchard. As it was, though, the injustice of it all only semed worse. The only good thing about the bathroom on David's floor at McKinley house was that the fluorescent lighting was less than reliable, and often blinked out completely so that you couldn't see the backed-up toilets and puce shower stalls. It was that way when David got there on Friday night, toothbrush in hand; never one to be discouraged, he propped the door open with his foot so a little light could come in from the hallway.

He was about to start brushing his tongue when a loud groan came from the farthest stall down, followed by labored breathing and a few undisguised moans as whoever it was tried to gain back their composure. Then another groan, and a splash. Someone was puking his guts out.

After a moment the door swung open with a clang and a tall, sandy-haired boy stumbled blindly out, face dripping his sweat. He paused by the door, staring over David's shoulder at his reflection in the mirror, eyes red-rimmed, face flushed and feverish.

"Here," David said politely, holding out his toothbrush, and saying the only thing he could think of. "Stomach acid can damage your teeth."

The boy paused a moment, tried to swallow, and then vomited all over David's toothbrush before managing to lurch out of the room.

When David asked Race about it the next morning at over breakfast at the Ironside, Racetrack only laughed. "So you met Jack?"

"Jack?"

"Yeah, Jack Kelly. You've heard about him, right? His sister got an English teacher fired?"

David managed a nod.

"What would you say if I told you that his family spends more on their horses than your father probably makes in a year?"

"He threw up on my toothbrush."

"Don't worry; if I know Jack, he'll buy you another one. He's a great guy once you get to know him."

"He…threw up on my toothbrush, Race."

"Trust me, David S. Jacobs; if you get to have Jack as a friend, your toothbrush is about the last thing you'll worry about him having ruined."

-

Author's Note: This chapter was brought to by tuna noodle casserole and far too many late-night viewings of Flashdance. The recap, please, Charlie?

DALTON: ((reads)) Benny Kittridge is the intended victim of drama-department contra war, Racetrack is Bruce Springsteen, Davey practices good oral hygiene, and Jack is a wino.

Who only needs to be loved!

DALTON: …who only needs to be loved. And Kraft still doesn't make pineapple Jell-O. But there is hope.

Also, there is no reason why a welder by day and exotic dancer by night cannot make it as a real ballerina.

DALTON: Now that's a relief.

-

Shout Outs!
Part of this complete breakfast!

Rubix
A shopping montage! I love peppy shopping montages. Almost as much as I love dramatic sewing montages—for instance, the dramatic prom dress sewing montage in Pretty in Pink. Charlie's seen that movie about fourteen times. It apparently takes incredible masculinity to appreciate Molly Ringwald.

Unknown-Dreams
I think that, no matter what happens, Race will always have problems…but that's why we love him so.

Lady of Tir Na Nog
I'm so happy I'm not the only one who thinks Race would make an awesome dad. I kind of wish he was MY dad, actually, when I'm not busy lusting after him.

Sapphy
Dearest Sapphykins, if I had any sex life at all I am sure I would not spend so very much time writing about sex. As it is I think my life is slightly less romantic than that of a sea cucumber.
DALTON: The sea cucumber is actually a highly sensual animal.
Oh, is it?
DALTON: Yes! Actually, Kennedy and I had some sea cucumber for dinner the night we—

FlatOutCrazy
Yes, Charlie and I will be together FOREVER. It's always been "till death do us part" for my annoying yet semi-cute preppie-muse and I…
DALTON: Which is why I am contemplating a violent death.
…Isn't he sweet?

Platy
DALTON: If you're going to be smug, dearie, then come be smug with me. I have a whole club. We drink frozen margaritas and make fun of "The O.C." Tuesday nights. You in?

Ccatt
DALTON: Intense? ((ponders)) …actually, I don't remember Dakki writing any camping scenes.
Get it? Intense? IN TENTS? Get it?
DALTON: Do you have ANY idea how lame we are?
…yes.

NadaZimri
If by "having fun" you mean "reading ten pounds of German philosophy every night and going to bed with my brain at the same consistency of tapioca" then I am.
DALTON: Not that you actually DO ANY OF YOUR HOMEWORK…
Yes, but Charlie, it's so tiring just to watch you read.

Ershey
DALTON: ((whistles casually)) …now where would you get THAT idea?
DAVID: Here's your knife!
DALTON: We're just…uh…having some cake…

Hotshot
I've come to the decision that writing a soap opera is just so much more fun (and easier) than writing realistic-type fiction. There's more sex, death, dishonesty, travesty, cross-dressing, and all that jazz. Also, there's nothing better than torturing the characters you love.

MusiCath
I actually got those statistics about teen sex from a very special episode of "Doogie Howser, M.D." so they may not be strictly kosher. But it's always nice to be able to do research and see Max Casella at the same time.

heraldtalia
Jack/David is my true calling in life, apart from this whole writing thing. My one goal is to convince EVERYONE that they are in love. So you can count on a lot of Jack, and a lot of David, and a LOT of improper conduct in the dorm rooms…and the supply closet…and the library…
DALTON: The library! Woman, have you no shame?
…"Woman"?

Silky Conlon
DALTON: ((gasps, horrified)) I am NOT Severus Snape!
He'll be crushed about that one for a week. He probably won't even come out of his room… ((pause)) …Thank you.

madmbutterly713
Oh, Race'll bounce back. I know that boy too well.
DALTON: …He's FICTIONAL.
SO ARE YOU.

Cakes
DALTON: Thank you. That was all I needed to hear.

Written Sparks
((sighs with utter happiness)) Thank you. That was all I needed to hear.

Shaturday
Oh, Saturday, remember the good old days (like two weeks ago) when we didn't even KNOW Knox was pregnant? And now he's about to deliver a little Overdalton! I have no idea how that happened.
DALTON: It's interesting that you're questioning the gestation period, rather than the fact that a male can even GET pregnant.
Well, you know, seahorses do.
DALTON: …so you think Knox is a seahorse.
Maybe just partly.
DALTON: That would actually explain a lot…

Cards
I make them up, mostly.
DALTON: Someday she'll meet someone who knows Myanmar isn't in the outer reaches of Nebulon-5, and then she'll be in real trouble.

ellaeternity
((grins ecstatically)) I made your butt numb! This is better than the Nobel prize for literature!
AND I LOVE MOLLY RINGWALD! Like, more than is even healthy. When I was fifteen I dyed my hair red and it looked incredibly terrible but I just wandered around buying pink clothes and thinking "I AM Molly." Except that, you know, I totally would have chosen the Duck Man.

Veritas4Eternity
Lord, I cannot even remember the last time I wrote something that WASN'T Jack/David slash. It would be a miracle if this wasn't. But it is. And there will be sparks. Because you can't start a fire without a spark. Even if we're just dancing in the dark. ((nods sagely))
DALTON: …you're an idiot.
Yes.

-

DALTON: Review! Or we'll sic Benny on you.