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Once, I Found That I Might Be a Good Friend

Ben Leib

    Once I turned eighteen, I realized that Petaluma High School could no longer force me to sit through class, that the truancy laws no longer applied. With this in mind, I chose to shirk my academic responsibilities in the most responsible way I could think of: I wrote myself off campus passes every day. I told the school that I would be missing this or that period ahead of time, thereby insuring against expulsion or some other unpleasant punitive measure. I was a charming kid, I thought, although never with the purest of motives. More than one parent had commented on my uncanny similarities to Eddie Haskell Jr. And Eddie had it right: crimes are forgiven those blessed with the gift of gab. At least I’d adopted the Eddie Haskel Jr. model of noncompliance, charming my way through disobedience rather than opting for angrier forms of rebellion.
    And it wasn’t as if I was committing any crimes during my forays away from campus. Needless risk was as far from my purview as tomorrow or the next day, and, more often than not, I was just leaving campus to get a cup of coffee, maybe a late breakfast. But, in the spirit of full disclosure, senior year wasn’t a great time for me. I had, by then, developed the thirst, and I often drank the school days away. Despite my charm, my affability, I was as selfish a teenager as they come, and kindness was a stopgap measure to ensure that I could achieve my aims as painlessly as possible. But, that said, there were moments that all the blind chatter in the world, the most calloused and benumbed of all vocal chords, couldn’t produce the language that would rectify a situation exceeding the limited intellect of one who relies on the wink and on the smile.
    When I waltzed into the office grinning like I worked for QVC, the office ladies weren’t at all surprised to see me. “Hello there Mr. Leib,” Miss Thompson said, with a dramatic roll of her eyes.
    “Hi Miss Hannon. Hi Miss Thompson,” I said. Seeing me approach the office counter, one might have thought it was my own place of business, thought that the two middle aged women to whom I addressed my salutations were, in fact, my own employees. “How are the most beautiful office ladies on earth today?”
    “Get a load of this kid.” Miss Hannon gestured with her thumb in my direction. “No need for the fireworks, we’re going to give you the off-campus pass.”
    “What is it today, Mr. Lieb, a cup of coffee?” Miss Thompson asked.
    “Invariably,” I said with a bow. “Am I really that transparent?”
    “Invariably,” Miss Hannon echoed.
    “Now that’s a disappointment. At the least, I’d like to retain a bit of mystery in the presence of such lovely ladies.”
    “Did you bring us a note?” Miss Hannon demanded. As a protocol, confirming the sanctity of school rules and the bureaucratic underpinnings of any well-lubricated institution, I was required to provide a note to the office before being granted permission to leave campus. Just like the student who needed to leave school early in order to attend a dentist appointment required written permission from their parents, I had to provide some form of documentation before I was given the official off-campus pass. Because I recognized the note writing routine as a formality, I made light of it. The note I’d brought in that day stated, “I am writing to request permission from the loveliest of lovely high school employees, that I be allowed to leave campus and get some coffee, without which, I may fall asleep in the honorable Mr. Wright’s calculus class, thereby upsetting said teacher and disrupting said class.”
    “He’s starting to write novels,” Miss Hannon said to Miss Thompson. “Thank God our little truant here is still attending English.”
    “English is one of my favorite classes.” It was also the first period on A days, and therefore held before I succumbed to the daily thirst.
    “All right Shakespeare, here’s your pass.” Miss Hannon handed me the little slip of paper.
    Needless to say, all my thoughts were, at the moment, self-focused. Would I return to campus and attend my final period? Did I need to hear that day’s lecture on functions, derivatives, and integrals, or could I get by without it? Would my buddy Hector still have that half bottle at his house? Would I be able to shoulder tap this early in the afternoon for a pint or so? So when my banter with the office ladies was interrupted by Jeanette, who sulked into the office, a wan, sallow shadow of her typical vibrancy, it was difficult for me to know just how to respond.
    As far as I was capable of kindness, of reciprocal and genuine caring, Jeanette was one of my best friends. But what defines a high school friendship? We spoke daily, hung out together every weekend, drank together at parties, and nursed each other through overindulgences. Jeanette was one of the few people in my life who’d had the time and opportunity to make a thorough study of my character defects, who had seen my selfishness in all its manifestations, and who, in the end, had ruled that my friendship was worthy of reciprocity, had not found me wanting. And Jeanette was one of those rare female companions with whom sex was not the motivating drive in maintaining friendship. Certainly, Jeanette was an attractive girl, cute and slender, pudgy cheeks and a toothy smile. More than her physical appeal though, it was Jeanette’s personality that made our shared time such a curious pleasure, that elevated her in my esteem to such a degree that I looked forward to our time together, that made me want to be a friend to her unconditionally. Jeanette had a laugh so severe it could break glass. She was loud and crass, had the mouth of a drunken sailor. Despite that, Jeanette retained a ladylike innocence that helped her to stand out. She could banter and drink with the boys, but as soon as the conversation turned too graphically lewd, Jeanette didn’t have a problem telling the boys how sick and disgusting and freakish she considered them. She was no delicate kitten, but, unlike some of the drunks with whom I’d wiled away the good drinking hours of the day, she wasn’t a bobcat either. Furthermore, Jeanette was genuinely funny, and there were few women, or people for that matter, who could arouse the level of hilarity that she evoked effortlessly.
    So, knowing her as well as I did, it was clear that she was troubled. She wore that subdued melancholy like a flak vest, armoring a more profound hurt that may never be allowed see the light of day. Before Jeanette got a chance to state her business in the office, I grabbed her in a bear hug. “Jeanette!! What’s up, Lady?”
    She wriggled from my grasp in a tremor of urgency. “Get the hell off me,” she said under her breath, “dude, you’re always up in my business.”
    “Shit, sorry, what’s wrong?” I asked.
    “Just give me some room, dude, I’ve got to talk to Miss Hannon.”
    Upon noticing Jeanette, Miss Hannon said, “oh my, darling, what’s the matter? What can we do for you?”
    “I’m just feeling really bad right now. I think I need to go home.” The vagueness of Jeanette’s statements made me all the more aware that something was urgently wrong. Having been rebuked, feeling helpless, I wanted, felt I needed to have some agency in righting the situation.
    “Are you feeling ill?” Miss Hannon probed.
    “Not exactly. I just don’t think I can handle class this afternoon.” Jeanette looked more aggrieved with each spoken word.
    “Well, let’s see if we can get in touch with your mom, okay? Let’s see if we can’t get you out of class for the day.” As Miss Hannon spoke, she approached the counter and placed her hands on Jeanette’s. Jeanette started to sob. Her emotion was audible, but not yet hysterical—her pain still willfully subdued. “My dad’s in the city, at the office. We won’t be able to reach him.”
    “What about your mom, Dear?”
    “She’s visiting my aunt today. I don’t know how to get in touch with her.”
    I dared to put an arm around Jeanette’s shoulders, and she didn’t shrug me off this time. She turned into my side, covering her face to hide her emotion. In the years that I’d known Jeanette, I couldn’t think of another time at which she’d cried openly in front of people. I had seen her cry twice before: once after an argument with a girlfriend, and on the other occasion I was driving her to the emergency room to get stitches after she’d accidentally cut herself while we drank together at Randy’s house. In the second instance, it was overwhelming fear that compelled the tears from her, and, because of this, I chalked it up as a rare and circumstance-specific exception. Despite an ingrained streak of feminine innocence, Jeanette was tough, hard even.
    “Come back here, darling. Come sit with me while we try to call your dad.” Miss Hannon beckoned Jeanette behind the counter.
    Once Jeanette made her way into the office proper, Miss Hannon grabbed her tightly. Miss Thompson had approached the counter and tenderly consoled Jeanette, rubbing her shoulder and speaking in uncurious maternal appeasements that bespoke of years of experience with daughters of her own. Jeanette didn’t shy away from the affection. She defenselessly submitted to it. Miss Hannon dialed her father’s work number. “No one’s answering, Jeanette.”
    “I knew we wouldn’t be able to get him.” Barely recovered from the first break down, Jeanette fell back to helpless sobbing.
    “What else can we do for you, Sweetie?” Miss Thompson inquired, “Do you need to talk to someone?”
    “No, I just don’t think I can take sitting in class this afternoon.”
    “Look,” I spoke up, “everyone deserves a sick day. It’s clear that Jeanette’s not feeling well. If someone’s sick, then it’s really not healthy for them to be in the classroom. It’s obvious that her parents wouldn’t want her to stick around, feeling this bad. Maybe she just needs to get something to eat, to get some rest. I’d volunteer to take Jeanette home, if you’d be willing to let her leave campus without her parents’ permission.”
    “What do you think, Miss Hannon?” Miss Thompson asked her colleague.
    “Shakespeare’s got a point. There’s no use forcing a sick student to stay on campus, especially if they have a ride home. I think we could make an allowance in this case. What do you think Jeanette? Would you be willing to accept a ride from our chivalrous truant here?”
    Jeanette nodded.
    “All right then, we’ll write out a pass for you.”
    “Thank you.”
    “All right, Girl, what are we waiting for?” She took her off-campus and thanked the office ladies again, and together we walked into those unpopulated hallways, the mark of the American high school, lined with rows of lockers, each sheltering a personality, as if the hallway itself were the repository of teenage identity, in all its strange and secretive manifestations.
    “Thanks, dude,” she said to me once we were alone.
    “Hey, no problem. I’m just sorry you’re feeling this bad.”
    “I’ll be fine.” We continued through the halls.
    Because I was so used to relying upon something approaching charm, approximating wit, a self-conscious simulacrum of extroversion, and because I was used to achieving my aims through the effort of gab, I felt something approaching crisis when I didn’t know what to say. “Did you go to your first two classes today?” I asked.
    “Yeah, but I was just feeling worse and worse the whole time.”
    “So you’ve been having a bad day?” I asked. “It’s not like something awful happened at lunch, or something, right?”
    “Yeah, just a bad day.”
    “Well, I’ll take care of you, Lady, okay?”
    Jeanette nodded.
    “You hungry? Did you have any lunch?”
    “No.”
    “I’m gonna get you something to eat too.”
    She nodded again.
    As we stepped from campus, we walked up B Street, where I’d parked in the lot of an old shopping center. The paving of that old parking lot was rutted and cracked, and, around its perimeter, was falling inch by inch back into a void of dirt and weeds. Most of the storefronts were vacant, but a little donut shop persevered, scraped by off of the unhealthy appetites of teenagers.
    “You got any herb?” I asked, looking for something more that I could offer.
    “No.”
    “I do. Maybe that’ll help, smoke a bowl or two?”
    “Maybe.”
    “It’ll be okay, Girl. Whatever’s going on, it’ll be okay.” I looked down at her as she rolled her eyes.
    I was driving an eighties model Ford Crown Victoria the size of a small barge. Because of the dull, fish-scale blue of that mammoth vehicle, my buddy Orion called it The Tuna Boat. The Crown Victoria was a hand-me-down from my grandparents, who had proclivities for over-sized American cars. The bench seats were as good as couches. I jumped in the driver side, unlocked the doors. Jeanette pulled herself into the grand vehicle and fell into the passenger seat. She looked diminutive in the great automobile, as if a prevailing misery were outwardly manifested in her diminutive stature.
    I started the car. “You gonna be all right, Girl?”
    She smiled at me a bit, “I’m fine. Thanks again, dude. I’m just having a rough time. There’s nothing to do about it.”
    “No more crying, right? No crying in the tuna boat.”
    “I wasn’t crying.”
    “That’s what I like to hear.”
    “Seriously, though.”
    “I didn’t see you crying.”
    “What are we waiting for?”
    “Where you want to eat at? Keep in mind, I’m on a fixed income.”
    “Taco Bell?”
    “Sounds good to me.”
    Jeanette put on her seat belt.
    “My herb’s in the glove box. You got a pipe on you?”
    She nodded.
    “Pack one up, Girl. Might not take your mind off things, but it’ll at least slow it down a bit.” She handed it to me once she had it packed. “You go ahead. I’m good right now.”
    Jeanette smoked while I drove into town. I took D Street down to the Boulevard, and drove through downtown Petaluma. We looked out the windows, scanning for any friends who might be loitering at Helen Putnam Plaza or Deaf Dog Coffee. Jeanette hit the pipe while I drove. I rolled down the window, lit up a smoke. “See anyone?”
    “No, it’s too early for anyone to be out.”
     “What’d you do last night?” I was trying to get a hint as to the nature of Jeanette’s melancholy. I thought that maybe, could I get a sense of the source of this prevailing misery, somehow comprehend the thing that had so transformed my friend, I could help, I would know how to behave, what to say in such a situation that I would be able to make things better. I had a fantasy that through language alone I could solve all of life’s problems, and that the only thing preventing me from doing so in this case was the inaccessibility of the problem at hand.
    “Nothing.”
    “I worked the dinner shift, but I went over to Hector’s when I got off. We didn’t hear from you. I thought you might come over to hang out.”
    “I went to bed early last night.”
    After pulling into Taco Bell, we decided to get drive through and eat in the parking lot. For most of the meal, we sat quietly, listening to music, enjoying the living room-like comfort that the Crown Victoria provided, watching traffic sail by.
    “You feeling any better?”
    Jeanette nodded.
    “The hell’s going on, Jeanette? You’ve got me worried about you.”
    “I told you, it’s nothing, dude!”
    “Should I be worried?”
    “It’s fine. I’m fine. You don’t need to worry. I’m not gonna do anything crazy. I’m just not feeling good. Is that all right?”
    “Totally all right.” I changed the subject, “Is there any weed left in that bowl?”
    “Un uh.”
    “You want to pack another one?”
    “Sure.”
    We smoked while we sat there, and I gazed sidelong at Jeanette, coming to an understanding within myself that I could not force the information I sought from her, and then questioning the nature of friendship in general. Where did the efficacy of words meet its terminal endpoint, after which meaning was drained absolutely so that language there becomes sound alone? And at what point does disclosure become harmful, terrifying? I gathered all our trash and jumped out of the car. When I got back in, Jeanette was leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed. “You want to go home and get some rest?” I asked.
    “I don’t want to see my mom right now.”
    “I thought your mom was out with your aunt.”
    “I just didn’t want to have to talk to her, you know, and try to explain myself.”
    “So what do you feel like doing?”
    “Are you going back to class?”
    “Nope, that ship has sailed, Girl. If I’m more than fifteen minutes late, I don’t make an appearance.”
    “You want to just drive around for a bit?”
    “I can’t think of anything better to do. Is there some place you want to go? We could grab some beer or something, head over to Hector’s house?”
    “No, I don’t feel like drinking right now.”
    I looked at Jeanette and she met my gaze. I was hoping for some sign, some indication of what was going on, as if I might clairvoyantly decipher the encrypted traumas Jeanette was guarding. Here was this person, one of my best friends, so different from me as to be barely understandable. Would I ever find out what had happened to make Jeanette so uncharacteristically downtrodden? And, what was my desire to know? How could I have possibly helped her? Was there some tormentor, some perpetrator toward whom I could direct the wrath that might recompense Jeanette’s heartache? And, if such a villain existed, would I have the heart, the audacity to confront him? How noble, how chivalrous could I possibly be? I was a sweet talker, not an avenger. Possibly, my eyes betrayed the confusion, the rage, the helplessness. And Jeanette, with her miserable countenance, seemed almost to apologize.
    I took her hand without breaking my gaze, “I’m sorry.”
    “Thank you.”
    With that, I started up the hefty Ford and we drove.

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