Scott Moran

A BLANK, BEWILDERED LOOK

Richard Conch. (He always thought his name was simultaneously boring and awkward). Richard Conch. The kind of name that spelled Idiot. In meeting people he could never begin with a blank slate--in meeting people he was already fighting his name that hung on his face like a piece of goat cheese. Richard Conch learned in the past twelve hours that the entire purpose of higher education, even including Orientation Weekend, was to drink. To drink: the fruit of his labor--the hapless browsing through college guides, searching for a college wanting undergrads with severe reading disabilities; the struggle of spelling on the application forms, and whether to put his first name last, or his last name above or below the line with 'last name' printed underneath it; the horror of visiting campuses, cringing in uncomfortable clothes, tripping along in the shadow of his overbearing mother; the torment of standardized tests and number two pencils--all to reach this magnificent climax in the Mobil station parking lot. Under-age participants of Freshman Orientation at Summerlin College, sitting in a battered red Ford Fiesta.

They were arguing about who should actually go in and actually purchase. Richard sat in the back seat saying nothing, because in one sense he did not care who tried to buy, or if they got served at all. More important, he was not sre if he liked beer or wine, and in that vein, any drugs, including all alcohol, cigarettes, Robitussin, No-Dose, Ny-Quil, Scope, Lysol, etc.

After thinking and listening and thinking of his future at Summerlin College, after deciding that he wanted his new friends to like him and not discover that he was quiet and weird, he concluded that he should take some minor risks. He already assumed that he was in the back seat of that red Ford Fiesta not because they wanted him there, but just because he was there. Like the broken window scraper on the floor. Not because his new friends said "Wouldn't it be cool to ask Richard Conch if he wants to go with us." Or, "Make real sure someone brings a broken window scraper."

His mother's words are always fresh in his mind in situations like these. His learning disabilities, she said, give him a "blank, bewildered look."

***

His new friends watched him from the car as he tripped along to the door of the Mobil station. They snickered and all looked the same. They were all having fun. Richard couldn't ever remember their names respectively. He knew that they were Peter, Mike, and Mike. If they were all Mike it wouldn't be such a problem, but one of them was a Peter. They weren't nervous about being at Summerlin. At least, Richard couldn't tell if they were. Richard was thinking that if his name was Mike or something, that maybe he wouldn't be nervous either. But he was Richard Conch; nervous.

"You go guy," shouted the driver. He was wearing the Summerlin College Co-ed Naked Lacrosse tee-shirt. Richard's mother thought he should get one of those shirts when they were in the college book shop. She said she'd pay for it. She said it would make him "a little more like the other students." But Richard Conch thought they were stupid because everybody has them and naked isn't funny. His mother said loudly in the book shop, "You know Richard, when the other people think something is funny, it is."

He wondered what she was doing now, as he opened the door of the Mobil station. She was probably on the phone, trying to call him and tell him not to do something, or to do something. She always knew exactly what to do or not to do.

Stepping into the cool, sterile interior of the Mobil station, taking the risk to better his relationship with his new friends, the boldest of the four was Richard Conch.

Once inside the door, he transformed himself into an experienced adult purchaser of alcoholic beverages. He ignored the eyes heating his back from a well-seasoned woman with bifocals, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette; the cashier whom he assumed had already determined that he was under-age, and if perceptive enough, that he was "quiet and weird."

He walked toward the blinking neon sign on the back wall. So casual. I'm so casual, he kept thinking. "Beer," blinked the neon blue words, "Beer". "Beer." "Beer."

He turned around after running into a dead-end aisle of different flavored Snapple iced teas, and tried to hold his composure while realizing that the two round security mirrors reflected the cashier witnessing his tremendous error. The cashier had her cigarette in the ashtray, emitting slow, sinister smoke, as if the smoke, too, was watching the beginnings of his four year degree in alcoholism, recklessness and debauchery. He looked away when he caught her gaze. That wasn't good, he knew, that he made eye contact with her in the mirror. That was bad.

Finally under the neon sign, he was overwhelmed with the immense selection. The two security mirrors revealed the cashier, as though there were two identical ones, smoking cigarettes with identical wisps of smoke, four eyes staring over him from both sides. With this in mind, Richard Conch wiped his nose a few times.

Beer was everywhere: bottles of Molson, Pilsner Urquell, Young's Oatmeal Stout--so much beer! He lifted out a cold six pack of Molson, but the bottles felt so big and red in his smooth minor hands, too bright and ostentatious for his underage purchase. He put them back, thinking that cans might be a safer opportunity. He searched for little tiny boring cans that he could feel safe with. Finally, he gathered up a floppy six pack of brown Miller High Life cans. They felt smaller and less conspicuous; less audacious than bottles, and perhaps, in theory, more like soda.

When Richard Conch was little, his mother said she didn't want some kid who couldn't assemble a model airplane. Later, Richard would understand that model airplane was a metaphor. But every Saturday morning, she would take Richard to Fay's drug store, and buy him the model airplane of her choice. She knew a great deal about his learning disabilities, because at Richard's old high school, she's the Special-Ed Teacher. When they got home from Fay's, she would lay out newspapers on the kitchen table and he had to put the model airplane together. "You can only get up once and that is to go to the bathroom," she would remind him. And then he would start the model. Sometimes his mother would read Reader's Digest, but most of the time she would stare at Richard as he struggled over the confusing diagrams in the dim kitchen light, inhaling the fumes from the long, gooey lines of Testor's model cement that always strung over everything.

His mother looked like a lot of teachers at a lot of public schools. She was short with short hair and glasses, bow-legged. She looked more like some bird of prey, with oversized spectacles that always made her lean her head back. The glasses made it necessary that she look down upon everything as though she disapproved or was perpetually smelling something bad. Sometimes she would even sit on the table, and stare down at him and her model airplane, to give him helpful advice: "Look at the picture--is that where the propeller goes? How could the propeller go there--think of what an airplane means!"

On the long walk to the smoking cashier, he thought of all he learned about the world by assembling model airplanes. Keeping a straight face, he carried the beer at waist level like he had often imagined carrying six-packs. He felt like a huge snail sliming along the floor. He pictured his eyes telescoping out at the cashier, all gross and extended. He knew he'd never buy beer.

Later, he would think of his walk to the cashier as the most clever thing he had ever done. The purchase of a pack of gum: Big Red. Proof to the cashier that he was just another man buying a six-pack, and wasn't that normal? So nonchalant, with the gum to clearly demonstrate that it was a multi-faceted shopping expedition, not just a minor's futile attempt to achieve undeserved glory among new friends. Not just some silly youth but a man of diversity, with needs not only for alcoholic beverages but for chewing gum as well.

When Richard's mother was pregnant with him, she was at Trenton State, working for her Masters in Special-Ed, and Richard believed that this was the sole cause of all his problems. All those case studies his mother memorized must have leeched into his fetus, the way drinking can cause fetal alcohol syndrome. If drinking can cause fetal alcohol syndrome, then isn't it perfectly obvious that reading, and especially memorizing texts on learning disabilities, would have the same trickle-down effect on the fetus? Richard felt that he was pickled in case studies. A helpless, unborn baby, trapped in a womb of dyslexia.

His mother said that was beyond stupid, but Richard knew that it had made her think. Besides, how else could he have an innate hatred for certain vocabulary that she used, like "active learning;" "curriculum;" "matriculate;" "resource room;" "the needy student this, the needy student that." "Needy."

As it was happening, gum in one hand, beer in the other, the cashier made his face falter and turn into writhing Jello. She rolled a cigarette while eyeing him, still exhaling through her nose. He felt his failure welling up. Fear and failure came over him like a wave. Like being shot in the back while running away--the bullets exploding out his chest, dropping the beer and the Big Red, flying silently and slowly through the air, falling to the ground, the smell of acrid smoke in his nostrils. But instead, he placed the gum on the altar.

"I will buy this," he said. Then he placed the beer on the counter, "and I will buy this." The cans looked huge and out of control, all over the place--he could barely see over them. He tried to not emphasize either item in his tone of voice.

She looked at the chewing gum first, holding it away from her with an outstretched arm, squinting through bifocals. Torturing him, actually: to make him suffer: to make him suffer for attempting to be something he never could be. He stood before her, quiet and weird.

"Gas?" She said.

He stood there. "Gas?"

"Gas, no," said Richard Conch. "Just this gum, and this."

He stared at his feet and the packs of cigarettes on the counter.

"Where you goin' there on this fine day?" She asked, and then he realized that her gaze had shifted from the gum to his shirt that said "Hooked-On-Phonics".

He couldn't tell what she was up to. Whether she was letting him know that he wouldn't get away with it; whether she was just interested in him because he was odd looking, or maybe she was just nice. Maybe some people in some places are just nice.

He decided that his last hope for glory was in his response, and in those seconds between normal question-answering time and the time when it is taking too long, he managed to respond:

"I'm from the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. I'm learning art."

Her pause made him fidget with the tray of extra pennies on the counter. She did not respond to his answer but merely worked the keys on the old manual cash register as though she was typing shorthand. He was thankful that she didn't ask what road it was on. That she didn't ask what the Clark Art Institute is. A penny rolled onto the floor, but on her side of the counter, so she would have to pick it up. She was impossible to read. She was not friendly, but drilling him with questions, emotionless, expressionless, like a computer.

After a long moment she asked, "Where you goin'?" Lighting the thin, bent cigarette. Richard Conch shivered, stepped on his foot and wiped his nose.

"Back," he said.

The word echoed back in his brain, echoing stranger and more awkward than the original 'live' version. Back? What could she be thinking now? The silence was excruciating.

"I love art," she said. He believed it was some sort of store code she was repeating to herself. Some sort of trick to reveal minors. She gave him change and put the items in a bag.

"Fine day to travel," she mentioned as he left.

"Particularly," he responded.

Walking out of the store into the blinding light, he felt godlike. In his upraised hands he held his Miller High Life and his Big Red gum. The sun gleamed on the shining cans. The sun gleamed on the red Fiesta. One thing on his side. One thing for Richard Conch. It's accomplished, he kept thinking. It's accomplished. One thing like this a day, just one small thing like this, and I'll be okay here.