Chapter 5: Table-top Thought
I spent the morning at the round table facing the window smoking cigarettes and coughing through crowns of smoke. I felt like my cousin. She was fourteen and staying with us for the summer. She got home late, turned to me and said "I lost my virginity," as she sat at our table chain-smoking my mother's cigarettes, tears sitting in her eyes. She stared at me, pulling tobacco into her mouth "Do you think I'm a whore?" The complacency in her voice made me both anxious and unbelievably sad. I was too young to understand the question but I told her no.
Here I was doing the very same thing. I imagine generations of my family spent their worries sitting at tables-timber or plastic, carved, expensive, stained-smoking until they couldn't breathe. We were a set of deniers, sipping our pain with brandy and devouring mistresses half our age. The women were the same. They scrubbed the house clean of the welts of ex-husbands and disappointing children. Our bowels were spiked with glass. We were harmless until we were broken.
Sirius plopped onto a chair, straddling it backwards. "What's going on mate?"
I shook my head no. Nothing is going on.
"You sure `bout that? Because last I recall you don't smoke cigarettes."
"I do now."
"Alright, new vice. I'm down for that. Pass me one, yeah." I pulled out a white-washed stripe; it looked like the missing piece of a picket fence. We smoked, feeling the tanged-brown substance dissolve, swept into our lungs and blood streams. I felt muggy and sick but I was too goddamn lost for anything else.
On one hand I had no clue how I felt, on the other I knew precisely. I didn't know how I should feel. I wondered if I should recount our conversations, because surely I could. Would I tell anyone? No, I couldn't. At least not yet. I wasn't sure how I would explain, how the words would form. I was like a bride mouthing "I do" in the mirror, words like vials dotting her thoughts my husband, married for three years now, on my wedding night.
At the same time, I felt raw. I expected to feel elated or fearful or empty, but I felt nothing of the sort. It was wrong, wasn't it? This pink, exposed emotion I was drowning in. It was as if layers of flesh like rock stratum were cut away. Her words were scalpels and knives, sloppy guns peeling off my skin, dragging away something heavy and wet. I felt not only naked but severed, cleaved into bits. I popped red and lucid but nobody could see it. Was I now some medical phenomena? Or had nothing really changed… had it all just been a dream?
_______________
Sunday was smoke and thought; it rose and curled, wept in balls before me. I didn't do any work, I couldn't. My notebooks and parchment and ink packets lay untouched. The thought of writing seemed absurd to me; school like some monstrous prank. How on earth could people work when there were women like Lily Evans who flirted you into oblivion, when there was sex like monster truck shows? How did anyone concentrate when love existed? It seemed blasphemous.
I entered class unprepared. Remus had thrown his potions essay at me "At least copy it," but I couldn't see the point. The potions master, Mr.Marguiles, called across the room "Got your essay Potter?"
"James," She called from across the room. "You realize that you are sitting on the floor, right?"
I said "No Sir." He spoke half-heartedly "15 points from Gryffindor." We were ordered to make a batch of Wellwerts Tilly (named after the creator), a mixture that soothed Wizard's Warts. I looked on hopelessly as Remus and Peter and Sirius read notes aloud adding question-marks and stewing over which to add first, looking befuddled and tired. They must have thought I was so selfish as I sat there with my chin on the desk, not helping, not even saying a word. But they were good friends, they didn't get huffy or yell at me to sit up and contribute. I felt guilty, but it was a restless half-guilt that I hardly paid attention to.
In my other classes I took notes on pages still bubble-stained with Lily's eyes. I tried not to look at her but when I did she was staring at her side, blinkless underneath the scotch-ceilings and quavered voices speaking in whispers and shouts. I felt like we were the only two people in the room, the rest were screaming masses, cells and cyclones of talk and breath. They knew nothing about profundity, about love.
_______________
At lunch I piled my plate with food, but I couldn't eat a bite of it. I was starving, but I was hungry in so many different ways that it seemed fruitless to feed one hunger and deny the others.
"I hate school." Peter said exhaling loudly.
Sirius responded. "You know, there's a support group for that. It's called EVERYONE and that meet at the pub on Fridays."
"Oh shut it."
"How was the pub?" I asked, vying for normalcy.
"As good as one can hope for."
"Very true Sirius, Fire Whiskey and weekends always produce something agreeable."
"What did you do James?" Remus, always so kind.
"Nothing, just hung around the room."
"Like a lump." Noted Peter.
"Yeah, like a lump."
"You need a girlfriend mate."
"We all need girlfriends, yeah."
"I say we set up some crazy tournament, name it something like `Win the Marauder's Hearts: A Journey'. We could have girl's running through tires shirtless and mud wrestling and competing in cook-a-thons."
"Real classy Peter."
"Thank-you Remus, I try."
"My goodness, you are so well-equipped"
"I try"
I stood up "Excuse me guys, but I need a smoke." Sirius looked up at me, narrowing his eyes to ask if I was alright.
"I think I'll join you."
"Since when did you two become nicotine fiends?" Peter looked suspicious.
"Since yesterday, apparently." Sirius answered for me. We walked out of the Great Hall and past chattering paintings, through the same door Lily and I escaped from.
"Where are you getting all these fags from on such short notice?" He seemed interested, mildly amused even.
"Amos Diggory,"
"Really? Didn't he used to date that Lily Evans girl?"
Lily Evans sat no more than a few yards away from me in the common room gazing at the fire place.
Yes. "No, no I don't think so."
"I'm pretty sure they did. They were rather hot and heavy if I remember-"
"No. I'm quite sure they never dated."
"Alright mate, no need to get all worked up by it."
"I'm not worked up, I'm…"
"Yes, what exactly are you because I haven't the slightest clue."
It was a hard question. I was ecstatic and anxious and deluded and changed. "I'm drained."
"May I ask why? When we came home last night you were dead asleep, and that's a first."
"It has nothing to do with that."
"Alright," He nodded. "Alright."
_______________
After the roar of lunch died down I headed to Charms and then Ancient Runes. I slept in my classes, feeling depleted. I daydreamed not of Lily but of dry, monochrome rooms. Brand new walls thin as fingernails, floor a vivid, glistening wood. I dreamt about being clean and whole because, for the time being, I felt bloodied. I still felt unformed.
I took to analyzing my teachers. For Charms there was Mr.Heely, a large, elegant man who wore silver-rimmed spectacles and personally tailored suits. He always sat on a low stool and he slapped his knee when he laughed. He was a nice man, head of Ravenclaw for years. I had once appeared at his desk begging to change a failing grade. He held up a fat, wobbly hand and said "Alright my boy. No need to worry, no need at all."
Our Ancient Runes teacher was named Juliette Kirkham (We felt scandalous knowing her first name, information passed on from someone's unknowing aunt.) Mrs. Kirkham was still very young, through not particularly attractive. She had bug eyes that sat too far apart, a nose that was flat but wide at the brim. She wore her hair in long, neat ponytails for as long as I could remember.
Three days later I was slumped at my desk in Ancient Runes watching her speak out of my peripheral vision. Sirius and Peter sat on either side of me (Remus attended Muggle Studies that period). I was contemplating what animal she resembled-an owl or a merekat-when I felt a finger dabbing at me, as soft as a paintbrush.
I spun around to see Lily Evans smiling at me, her skin covered in a sheath of freckles. They swallowed her face.
"Hi."
In my head all I heard was `Shit. Shit. Shit.' But I managed "Hi…" It was unexpected. She was breaking the code, bringing that night out of our damp, hazed recollection.
She bent forward, almost giggling "Could I borrow a quill?"
"Um… yeah, sure. One sec."
She paused. "Do you know what time it is?"
"Yeah, one sec," I strained to read my watch in the dark. "It's 11:15."
She was surrounded by her friends; a dark-haired girl watched the interaction. I pulled out a quill, handed it to her making sure our fingers didn't touch. "Thanks."
I could still feel her watching the back of my head, caressing my hair and earlobes Those eyes were scalding hot. I was used to watching her-the details could have filled spiral-bound masses-but this feeling was different. It was uncomfortable and nerve-wracking. All I heard was the sound of a quill being tapped or scratching words.
I soon returned to the fizzy feeling. I wondered why I had been upset in the first place. I was wonderfully, blissfully raw. The air was sunny and budded, I spent my last Saturday with Lily Evans and a few minutes ago she solicited a quill. Things were road mapped and blooming with possibility. Hope as thick as lead gummed my thoughts. No wonder I was daydreaming about pure, clean rooms. I was simpler now. Instead of her deconstruction, I had taken part in my own.
-->