Nothing as Whole as a Broken Heart, Barry Rachin [short story to read TXT] 📗

“All happy families resemble one another,
each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way…”
Leo Tolstoy


Grace Paulson chalked Tolstoy's words onto the blackboard. “The author's remarks from the opening of Anna Karenina… what do they mean to you? Take a few minutes. Collect your thoughts and put them down in a short essay.”
A skinny girl in the front row raised her hand. “Can we give personal examples?”
“Nothing scandalous,” the teacher cautioned, tongue in cheek. Students tore sheets of lined paper from loose-leaf notebooks and began scratching out their feelings about domestic bliss and the lack thereof. A lean brunette on the front side of forty, Grace scanned the mélange of sleepy faces. The fleeting thought occurred to her - in a year's time, her daughter, Angie, would be old enough to sit in her junior class. What a hoot! In the rear of the room, Jerome Spellman fumbled with a wrinkled sheet of lined paper. The boy had nothing to write with. “Jerome, do you need a pencil?”
Without raising his eyes, the boy shook his head both vertically and horizontally all at once. Grace had long since given up trying to read Jerome’s body language. He picked his nose in class and scratched his privates. Or sometimes he did neither and just slumped dully like an extra in some B-rated horror movie - Night of the Living Dead.
Wednesday morning toward the end of third period, Dr. Rosen stopped by Grace's classroom. With his bristly moustache and mop of curly brown hair the school psychologist reminded Grace of a Hassidic rabbi. Dr. Rosen wore a dozen different hats at Brandenberg. He tested special needs kids to determine grade levels and where their educational weakness lay. He also counseled kids with emotional problems and ran a play therapy group at the elementary school. “You wanted to see me?”
She led the psychologist into the corridor. “Jerome Spellman’s a zombie. The other kids are afraid of him.” The psychologist cleared his throat but did not respond.
“You heard what happened in the cafeteria yesterday?”
During lunch at Brandenberg High School, an entire table emptied out to make room for one student, Jerome Spellman. When the boy lowered his food tray, every boy and girl within thirty feet noiselessly drifted away - a mass exodus. And there he sat - the school weirdo, misfit, whacko, loon - chewing on a boiled hot dog, oblivious to the rest of the universe. Indifferent and utterly unconcerned. “Jerome’s simple schizophrenic.”
“Simple as opposed to what?” Dr. Rosen ignored the remark. “He smells rancid lately. Several of the kids asked to have their seats moved.”
“Then move their seats.”
“That’s a convenient remedy.”
“Simple schizophrenia is a progressive disease. There’s no known treatment or cure. One telltale sign is a disregard for personal hygiene. They stop bathing,… brushing their teeth.” Again Dr. Rosen lowered his eyes and stroked his bushy moustache. Everyone knew the man was brilliant. He’d passed the brutal Massachusetts psychologists’ licensing exam on the first try, a feat few professionals could boast. Only a year into his accreditation, he edited the association's monthly newsletter. And yet, his fatalistic attitude toward Jerome Spellman was unnerving.
“What about medication?”
“Doesn’t work.” The psychologist looked morose.
"Counseling?"
He just stared at her with a leaden expression. Several students milling about in the hallway were staring at them. Grace lowered her voice so the others couldn’t hear. “The kid belongs in a mental hospital.”
“Snake pits like the MIMH are where most simple schizophrenics eventually end up. So why kick Jerome out of public school, if he isn’t going to fare any better at a state mental hospital?” The psychologist removed his glasses and massaged his eyes in an undulating motion. “Is he learning anything in class?”
“No, nothing. He's flunked every test to date. When I call on him, half the time he doesn’t even respond so I move on to the next kid.”
“But you have a good relationship with Jerome?”
Grace blinked and peered at the man. "He's a zombie. He lives on another planet."
“If the opportunity presents itself between classes, ask Jerome about his plans for the future, any goals or aspirations, and let me know what he tells you.”
Goals or aspirations. Jerome Spellman was courting straight F’s. The boy had failed every test and homework assignment since the beginning of the academic year by either not participating or writing gibberish. Grace filed Dr. Rosen’s strange request away in the back of her mind. “Parent-teacher conferences are next week.”
“I’ve been in regular touch with his parents since September, and they understand the nature of the problem. It’s a pernicious disease and it’s not their fault.”
“I didn’t suggest it was,” Grace returned defensively and reached for the doorknob.
“Jerome’s not to blame either,” he added. “It’s just the way things are.”
Back in class, Grace stared listlessly out the window. The infamous MIMH that Dr. Rosen alluded to was the Massachusetts Institute of Mental Health. The state mental asylum was a dumping ground for the mentally unbalanced, criminally insane, destitute, morons and assorted lost souls. In a perverse sort of way, Dr. Rosen was right. Why subject sixteen year-old Jerome Spellman to such a fate any sooner than necessary? The bell rang. Students collected their backpacks and flitted off to their next class. All but Jerome. Passing Grace’s desk, his apathetic eyes brushed her face, but there was no warmth, no humanity. Long after he was gone, the air reeked of the most hideous stench.

It’s just the way things are.
Dr. Rosen, the school psychologist, had warned Grace never to force the issue. In early September, the soft-spoken man drew a small circle on a piece of paper, and then sketched a much larger orb next to the first. “This is the universe normal people inhabit.” He waved the tip of the pencil over the larger of the two. “This nether region is where Jerome currently resides. Don’t cross the invisible boundary.”
The invisible boundary was a euphemism for the Minotaur’s maze of insanity. Dr. Rosen didn’t put it quite so bluntly, but the message was clear: crazy people can’t handle stress. A belligerent tone or threatening gesture could precipitate a full-blown catastrophic reaction. Jerome's was an insidious, incurable disease. Stay outside the circle of craziness.
Now Dr. Rosen wanted feedback. Grace intended to speak with Jerome, but, when class ended, the boy lowered his head and slunk out of the room like an adolescent battering ram, almost knocking one of his classmates over as he dashed out into the hallway. Inhabiting his own hermetic universe, nothing he did was intentionally malicious. “Hey, watch it!” the offended party shouted. Jerome never looked back.


* * * * *

Over the holiday weekend, Grace and her daughter were hiking the northernmost stretch of the Appalachian Trail. “Well, I guess it’s just us girls.” Grace's husband was away on a business trip. She was loading provisions in a backpack, the lightweight frame propped up against the door jamb. There wouldn’t be refrigerators where they were going. No stoves, central heating, flush toilets or other basic amenities. “We’ll park twenty miles below the base of Mount Katahdin and hike north. Climb to the summit then retrace our steps.”
Angie handed her mother a stack of wooden matches sealed in a watertight metal tube. The fifteen year old girl was a plumper version of the mother with dirty brown hair and easygoing temperament. “How high?”
“Five thousand two hundred and sixty-eight feet.”
“Twelve feet less than a mile.”
“That's a vertical mile.” Grace smiled laconically. “Only if you zoom straight up like a helicopter.” She took the matches and stashed them in a side pocket next to the spare flashlight batteries. The tent was tiny, just large enough for two.
Grace was imposing a three-day moratorium on all thoughts about Jerome Spellman and similar, impending calamities. The trip was planned as R and R - strictly a mother-daughter, getaway weekend. In the morning, they drove north on route 95, crossing the New Hampshire state line around ten a.m.. They reached north central Maine by early afternoon and parked the car in a small lot just off the trail. The weather was warm and muggy. “Get your pack up high on your shoulders,” Grace cautioned, “so the weight’s evenly distributed.”
A clutch of hikers - some lugging huge quantities of gear and others traveling light - passed leisurely in either direction. No one seemed in any great hurry. Grace knelt down and fingered a smallish leaf, red fading to yellow.
“It’s just a maple leaf,” Angie flexed her shoulders. The pack felt comfortable, not too heavy.
“Aspen, from the genus, populus,” her mother corrected, indicating the serrated points arranged symmetrically across the leaf. Throughout high school she had dreamed about becoming a botanist or, perhaps, an ornithologist. Plants and birds were so much easier to quantify and qualify than humans. Somewhere she got sidetracked. “The flattened stalks,” She held the delicate plant up for her daughter to see, “make the leaves tremble at the slightest breeze. A very noisy tree.” She let the leaf slip from her fingers. With the sun drooping over their left shoulders, they looked north toward the summit of Mount Katahdin in the far distance. “Let’s go!” They struck off down the gravelly path at a loping gait with Angie bringing up the rear. A half-mile down the rough trail they came to a pond, edged by thick stands of beech with a smattering of hemlock and white pine. Except for a few gray squirrels, they saw no animals. Passing through an open field at the far end of the pond, Grace pointed out the variety of wildflowers - an endless succession of lady’s slipper with their pouch-like lips, black-eyed Susan and meadow lily. “That a jack-in-the-pulpit.” She pointed to a leafy plant. “Also known as Indian turnip. The local natives ate the roots as a main part of their diet. Some old-timers probably still do.”
Around six, though the sun was still high, they stopped for supper. Using water from a nearby stream, Grace boiled a pan of whole grain, basmati rice over an open fire. As it cooked, the rice released an aromatic, nutty odor. In a separate pan she sautéed onions and green peppers. Other hikers passed on the trail. A young boy waved and his father tipped his hat. Everyone seemed intent on getting to his or her destination before the bruised light bled out of the sky. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, but it was still warm.
"Do you know Jerome Spellman?" A mental lapse, Grace had forgotten about her earlier resolution to focus exclusively on the trip.
"The weirdo?"
Grace cringed. "He's not doing well."
"Yeah, I know." There was an awkward pause. “Doris Fuller's mother waitresses over at Ryan's Diner." The girl stumbled awkwardly over several words and had to pause to compose herself. “The family lives just up the street from the Spellman's house on Hemlock Drive. Nice people. The father works for a brokerage firm. The mother sells real estate.”
“Mrs. Fuller knows the parents, then?”
Angie shook her head. “No, only to wave when they drive by in the evening. But Jerome stops by the restaurant for breakfast every Saturday morning.”
“That’s nice.”
“Not really. You see,