Long Division Page 12

  Gus offers his van and his company for Chicken pickup day. I can tell he’s kind of envious of my idea and its actual execution.60 He lives in an apartment the size of a toaster oven that could barely accommodate a guinea pig. When he calls me back Saturday to ask why I’m building the chicken coop,61 he immediately asks to come along.

  When he picks me up, Gina is perched in the passenger seat. I see her hair all sloppy and beautiful, tied up in an exotic-looking scarf. It’s the kind of style sorority girls attempted to affect in college when they were wearing cutesy, low-rise sweatpants to their morning lectures. The casual look. But I’ve seen the sorority girls agonize over these hairstyles in the bathroom mirrors between classes, twisting and puffing the tucked-under ponytail poof to achieve the perfect semblance of carefree grooming. But Gina, you can tell she has just tossed it up there with her eyes closed and probably while walking or talking to Gus about eco-friendly microchips. I’ve met her once before back around Christmas—very briefly—and she managed to compliment my earrings, make a reference to pogo sticks, and say nothing about my boyfriend being in Iraq. Four hundred fifty-five points for Gina.

  As I’m locking my front door, Gus rolls down his window. He shouts, “Come along, little lady. We’re going down to the farm!” And then he whoops. I toss the kitty carrier in the back and fold myself into the van’s only bench seat. In between my directions to the farm, Gina politely asks me about what I did the night before. I tell her I made pudding and watched the first three hours of the Pride and Prejudice miniseries that I own on DVD. And after I say it, I realize how lame it sounds, so I specify, “tapioca pudding,” like the clarification will prove that I’m actually interesting. Gina politely comments that pudding is definitely one of the things she misses most since she turned vegan over the holidays.

  Gus and Gina are both very excited about my chicken (which convinces me that David would be too if he were here. It’s his present living /working situation that’s making pet chickens seem so absurd by contrast. Right?). Even though she doesn’t eat animal products of any type, Gina totally supports me harvesting my own quasi-organic, semi-free-range eggs. And this makes me feel great. To have people understand me like that. To have their spirits lifted at the same time for the same reason. Gus turns the radio up when “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” comes on, and we all sing along. We really belt it. People. Streetlights. Everything. It’s amazing. That song just makes me feel so good. I won’t stop believing. Ever.

  The gravel driveway that leads to Harrington Egg Farm is marked by a plywood sign with faded lettering hanging from a post by chains. And dangling from the sign by ropes are three rubber chickens. The classic jokester kind.62 I love the place already. We park alongside a long, narrow barn with a paint job that looks straight out of a dusty old movie. A sign on the barn says OFFICE and points toward the house just across the way.

  Before we’re halfway there, a man (Edward Harrington himself, I’m instantly sure) comes busting out the screen door. “Good afternoon, folks. How can I help you?” I pipe up.

  “Hi. I’m Annie Harper. I called earlier about buying a chicken.” I shift my weight and start to question my footwear decision of rubber rain boots. Edward Harrington is wearing loafers. No socks.

  “So you are. Right this way, Annie Harper. I’ve got someone in mind.” He leads us into the long barn, and I hear Gina muffle her gasp at the rows and rows of caged chickens. Chickens stacked on chickens beside chickens. It’s like four dimensions of chickens. What’s weird about it is the noise. A high-pitched jumble of cluckings. It reminds me of the sound a group of one thousand old women might make before the curtain rises at a burlesque show: nervous, fidgety, but somehow ready for a blush-inducing shock.

  Edward Harrington doesn’t take us in very far. Gus and Gina actually step back outside for air. “Right here,” he says, unlatches a cage, and reaches his hands inside. He asks me to hold my carrier up as he removes the fluttering bird with a gentleness that takes my breath away.63 His hands are thick and creased like tree bark, and I can tell that he knows the perfect way to hold the animal so that it calms and quiets just so. I wish Gus and Gina were here to see it. To see that this is a man who respects the creatures who earn his living. He murmurs things like easy does it and in you go, love as he guides my chicken into the kitty carrier.

  Once we’re outside, he explains to us that my chicken (yes, he says your chicken already) spent her first week as a chick in the petting zoo of the Puyallup State Fair. So she’s great with humans, he says. Over five thousand people go through that petting zoo each day of the fair, he tells us. Immediately, I want to nuzzle my face into my chicken and see if her feathers smell like caramel apples and feel like cotton candy. It’s nice to know her beginnings and that she’s already received the affections of thousands of snuggling children. Edward Harrington explains that his wife—“God rest her sweet soul”—was heavily involved in the fair committee and that they started using their chicks in the petting zoo years ago. I can’t wait to tell my students this.

  When I ask Edward Harrington how much I owe him for my chicken, he laughs at me. “One chicken?” he says. “Well, I’ve got a pickup truck full of alfalfa that needs unloading. How about your gentleman friend have a go at it while you two ladies join me for some coffee?” I look at Gus. He’s smiling and nodding, and I can tell he’s thinking that his labor will qualify him for partial chicken ownership and regular egg rations.

  “Sounds like a deal,” he says, and Edward Harrington directs him toward the truck and a smaller barn with a tired-looking horse milling around behind a fence.

  Gina and I follow Edward Harrington to his front porch, and as he holds open the screen door I notice a wooden sign nailed to the side of the house. WELCOME TO OUR HOME, it says, and scrawling along the top (in a script that reminds me of the way my grandmother signs her checks) are the names EDWARD AND HELEN HARRINGTON. We sit down, and as the coffee brews, I’m instructed on the proper care techniques for my new hen. Temperatures. Heat lamps. Waste disposal. Feed. When to be alarmed by excess molting. How many eggs to expect when. Edward Harrington even imitates the cluck of a sick hen, a worried hen, a happy hen. Gina and I are both beaming the whole time, wishing Edward Harrington into our own families. I can tell Gina has forgiven him for his cruel, prisonlike ways. He gives me his business card and one for a local feed store where I can purchase the perfect meals for my new friend. He says, “Tell them Ed Harrington sent you. They’ll give you a discount.”

  When Gus returns from his barn chores, he’s sweaty and smiley and seemingly very pleased with himself. I’m certain he’s never tossed bales of alfalfa around before, and I know he’s the kind of person who loves to diversify his life experiences by adding such things to his list. I thank Edward Harrington over and over again for the chicken, the coffee, his kindness. “You better get that happy hen home, Annie Harper. Let her settle into her first night in the big city.”

  In the van my chicken is kind of jumpy. I try to whisper soothing things to her while she clucks, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. When she finally settles down a bit, Gina asks me what I’m going to name her. And though I do think “Janice the Reference Librarian” and “Spice Drop” are very wonderful chicken names, I make a quick, easy decision about the identity of my chicken.

  “My chicken,” I say, and I pause dramatically. “Her name is Helen.”

  As we drive home, the sun sinks into the horizon, gushing its last light into a partially cloudy sky. It’s that dusky glare that begs for sunglasses and can illuminate one thing (a mini golf course on our left) and drape another (an abandoned gas station on our right) in complete shadows. I have no sunglasses, so I close my eyes and let my weight melt into the vinyl seat of the van. I think about how pleasant the day was. How there was no explaining and no insecurities and this huge sense of accomplishment. I had woken early to mend a few holes in my backyard fence and sprinkle the fresh sawdust into the bottom of Helen’s coop. I had driv
en to a feed store64 for chicken food and this insulating blanket for the coop, graded a stack of math quizzes, and made a pasta salad. My mother would say that pasta salad is a summer food and not for February consumption, but I like making huge batches of things on the weekends and eating them all week long. I know that’s rather boring, but feeling organized makes me feel safe. I hope that makes sense. So I’m very tired in the car.

  I realize now that I’m writing this down that once I stepped my booted feet onto Edward Harrington’s land, I didn’t think about David for the rest of the day. I thought about me and Gus and Gina and Edward and Helen Harrington and my new Helen Harrington and horses and chicken food and the smell of alfalfa and the noise that a barn door makes when it slams shut. I’d be lying if I said the distraction wasn’t lovely.

  We pull into the driveway and I invite Gus and Gina in for some pasta salad and a beer. “It might be vegan!” I say, hoping the bow-tie pasta I used doesn’t include eggs. Gina doesn’t seem too concerned. First we head around to the backyard, where I set Helen’s carrier down in the middle of the yard and I open its door. We shuffle inside—to give her space and peace—and watch from the kitchen window as nothing happens. I turn on the porch light and start saying things like “Come on, girl. Let’s go, Helen. I promise you’ll love it here.” Gus moves to the fridge and returns with three bottles of Heineken. I don’t tell him it’s left over from David and this summer. And I don’t really mind that we’re drinking it. The three of us stand there silently for a few minutes, sipping, staring, mentally coaxing Helen into her new world.

  About halfway through the beers, we see a beak. There’s a simultaneous intake of breath. We hold it. It’s a timid little beak followed by a head and brown feathers coated in glistening trepidation. And then she does it. Helen—oh, she is so brave and I so proud—steps into the moonlight/porchlight/limelight of our evening. We all cheer. We clink our beers together and settle down to the kitchen table, pasta salad, baby carrots and hummus, a full bag of Fig Newtons. Later, as Gus clears the dishes and moves them into the sink, he says, “Wow, Annie. You have a garbage disposal, a dishwasher, and a chicken.” He turns and looks at me as I’m shoving another Fig Newton into my face. “You’ve made it,” he says. I smile. Crumbs fall everywhere.

  14

  Today I’m calling my book Reactivating the Fumes (You will see why in five to ten minutes, depending on how fast you read), and it’s going to have a collage of small scratch ’n’ sniff stickers on the dust jacket. Everything from french fries to strawberries to a little mini chicken coop. Glue sticks. Roses. Dishsoap. Chocolate. Maybe one of David’s secret weapons that smells like sulfurous gunpowder. I understand that this will probably cost the publisher an ass-load of money, but they will certainly sell tons more copies with this sort of gimmick. Scratch ’n’ sniff is sooooo my generation.

  Having a chicken has really improved my productivity and relaxed my mind. I wake up in the morning and see Helen scratching around in the patio outside her coop, poking her beak in and out of my dewy grass, sending her shiny feathers into waves of ripples with brisk, good-morning shimmies. And I go outside and greet her with a disgusting baby-talky, chirpy sweetness. I never knew I was capable of speaking in such diminutives.65

  Anyway, almost every day I find an egg and shower her in praise, thanks, and congratulations. I think it helps. I think it really makes her feel good. And there’s something about the way she fills her role so perfectly. She keeps to herself, clucks a bit, stays relatively tidy, lays eggs, sleeps, eats—success! A perfectly functioning creature! And thank goodness and Edward Harrington, she’s a perfectly functioning content creature. She’s really become quite the role model.

  So in less than ten days, I’ve planned a Valentine’s Day field trip. Annie Harper, perfectly functioning teacher. I knew it was going to be tough—in ten tiny days—to jump through the school district’s flaming administrative hoops, to remind my children to get their permission slips signed, to coax five parents with minivans (and a day off ) to chaperone, and most of all, to convince Jean and her dubious, undulating arm fat (whose grip on Violet Meadows policy is surprisingly taut) to allow my brood of babies in for a visit.

  But I did it.

  There was resistance from Barfley, who’s known for vetoing field trips that aren’t to the local trout hatchery or the lame children’s museum downtown. But I quoted some bullshit line from the school’s mission statement and then commented on the new girls’ basketball trophy in Barfley’s office. Done.

  Jean was slightly more difficult to sway. It was primarily a health issue.

  “I’m sorry. We absolutely cannot have children on the premises. The germs they carry are a substantial hazard to our residents.” I swear Jean was reading out of a manual.

  “Come on, Jean. Just this once?”

  “Absolutely not.” And then I hung up on her.

  I knew instantly that some damage control and stupendous effort was required at this point—that pouting and quitting so soon was no way to get what I wanted. What would a chicken do? What would the industrious, courteous Helen do?

  So I called right back before Jean had a chance to leave the office. And in a flash of negotiating genius, I suggested that the students all sport paper surgical masks and that we slather their little hands in liquid sanitizer as they walk through the door. And maybe it wasn’t those brilliant closing terms, but more Jean’s desire to punch out and get home, but she said yes. Yes! I do a little dance in my kitchen and bang on the window to inform Helen of the victory.

  I wake up on Valentine’s Day humming. I select a bright red cardigan and black skirt, tights with a thick ribbing, and the trendiest of my low-heeled teacher shoes. Blow-dried hair replaces my usual limp, damp ponytail, and I apply four different makeup products to my face.

  We spend the hour before we leave practicing our songs and rehearsing our skit one last time. It’s a story the class wrote as a group about a gorilla and a piranha who become friends when the gorilla saves the piranha by throwing bananas at a group of ninja/pirate66 fishermen along the Pokemon River on planet Neptune. The piranha then teaches the gorilla how to swim. Meanwhile, the gorilla’s family abandons him because he’s fraternizing with fish—“those ick-nasty gill breathers!” Eventually the two friends swim down the Pokemon River to a different village, where they open up a very successful comic book store. The skit is complete nonsense, but I still think it’s outstanding. A whimsical tale of friendship and tolerance. It took everything in me to gracefully veto a super awesome decapitation scene. The two-years-ago Teacher Annie wouldn’t have blinked twice and let the ninja/pirate heads roll, but then some lame parent would make a phone call and then Annie’s head would roll. I now know better.

  I told David about this skit the night before. It took far too long to explain it (I’ve never been good at summarizing), and David was obviously confused by the blatant nonsense. “So how can they be ninjas and pirates?” he had asked. Then he said, “You really let those kids go wild—they must love you.” And then I said (perhaps more defensively than I intended to), “It’s not wildness, David. It’s called creativity, and it’s good for the brain.” I certainly don’t question him about the numerous nonsensical elements about his job. But anyway, there are more important anecdotes for me to be typing here: the ones involving hand claps, tambourines, and big huge helpings of joy.

  As we’re waiting for the chaperones to arrive (amongst them are Lacey Atkins’s mom, Charese [applause], and Caitlin Robinson’s mom, Denise [boooooo]), I go over some behavioral rules with the kids.

  “We need to be extra polite and remember not to touch anything.”

  “Will they give us candy like my grandpa does?” says Ben Morris.

  “No, but I will give you candy if you act like angels.”

  I think we’re fairly well prepared. Miss Harper’s Class Presents V-Day at V-Meadows 2004 is going to rock the house slippers off that oldie gang. I am so sure of it.

&nb
sp; We all gather in the scarcely populated parking lot to position our surgical masks and roll our sleeves up in preparation for the hand sanitizer. On my drive home from school last night I was struck with the idea to decorate the surgical masks respective to each student’s role in the skit: Mambo and Spike Conquer the Universe. If David was going to call me on my nonsense tolerance, I was going to go all-out nutso. NONSENSE RULES! So I pulled over at a drugstore to stock up on construction paper and Magic Markers. Sharp, angular teeth for the piranhas. Fat, dark lips for the gorilla family. Gold67 and blacked-out teeth for the ninja/pirates. The rest of the cast—dancing trees, a sunshine, the narrator, myself, and the chaperones—have Valentiney hearts and kissy faces on our masks. The project became so elaborate, I went through five episodes of a shark program marathon on the Discovery Channel and had to tiptoe over the thirty-five masks sprawled on my living room floor to dry. They looked like bulbous alien creatures growing on the surface of Neptune, I thought as I teetered through. They looked fantastic.

  So I get out the masks, and the way my students shout Cool! and Awesome! and You made these, Miss Harper!? makes my insides gurgle like a brimming root beer float: fizzy and sweet and perfect. After the crew is perfectly costumed and after their hand germs have been viciously slaughtered by chemicals,68 Miss Harper’s class heads inside. And Loretta doesn’t know we’re coming. (!!!!!!!!)

  We gather in the recreation room and Jean makes an announcement over the PA system that there will be a special Valentine’s Day performance by surprise guests in the rec room. I’m so pleased with the way she inflects the words “surprise guests” with what sounds like genuine enthusiasm. After the announcement, we wait. It’s quiet. Seconds pass and I start to think that no one is coming. Denise Robinson looks at me, raises her eyebrows, and smacks her gum. I’m nervous. “Where is everyone?” some twerp says. And just like that we hear it. The gritty murmurings of ancient vocal chords. The slow swish of plastic-soled loafers on linoleum. The high-pitched creaks of wheelchair bearings. The three hallways that lead to residents’ rooms sprout off the recreation room, and the students follow my gaze from one corridor to the next as our pale, cottony audience approaches. I try to read the faces of the seniors. Most are blank, some carry the standard crumpled brow, and a few—a gorgeous few—are already smiling.