Am I a monster?

Joe could not stop thinking of Angie Sanger. It was strange because he could not remember what Angie Sanger looked like, other than a vague idea that she was taller than the other girls in his fourth-grade class. She wasn’t remarkable or popular. In fourth grade, Joe Banks wasn’t remarkable or popular either. If there had been a ranking of the 20 or so kids in that class, she would have been the one with the fewest friends. Or at least that would have been the guess of the other kids. But Joe had just as many friends as she did, which was to say he had none.

What Joe kept playing over and over in his mind was a three-second clip of something he had done to her when he was 10. It was terrible. So terrible he had never told anyone about it as an adult, even his therapist. Joe had stabbed this girl in the back with a sharpened pencil for no reason. He had walked behind her, with a pencil in his hand and stuck it in her back. It hadn’t been so deep to really injure her, but deep enough to hurt for sure. Angie screamed, of course. She leapt upwards and instead of strangling him or knocking him down, she simply cried. And when Joe saw her face, something inside him broke, or broke more than it already was broken. Joe was suspended.

He remembered sitting numbly in the principal’s office mumbling nonsense about why he had done it. He didn't lie or try to make excuses. It was 1986 and Joe had been lucky not to be thrown out of school, a relic of an earlier time. His mother, who was sweet and kind, had looked at him like he had mugged someone on the street. Joe wasn't sure if his mother ever loved him the same afterwards.

He had done it for no reason. No reason he could remember. Angie didn’t do anything to provoke him. Joe tried to remember if some other kid had told him to do it. He didn’t think so. It was like smashing a window just to see the glass break. And the damage he did. Only she knows, though the physical wound was literally skin deep. Joe never spoke to her again. She changed rooms. Who could blame her. And she, maybe, changed schools? He had no reason to do it except pique. Like the decision to kill a bug, inflicting ultimate punishment for an unknown crime.

Joe had done the damage and now the thoughts of that incident, more than three decades earlier, filled his mind on repeat. Stab, scream, tears. It wasn’t on a constant loop, but lately it had been intruding on his mind more frequently. What kind of fucking monster does that, he thought. The act was like a dark patch underneath his skin that no one could see. He vaguely thought that his only reason was to establish some kind of power in a school room where he had none.

He wasn’t strong, or tough, but he had a bit of defiance in him that ensured his teachers would never give a glowing parent-teacher conference report. At that point in his young life, he was trying to figure out if he would be a thug or an artist. To the person sitting next to him on his flight to New York, he seemed like a pretty normal person and was neither a thug nor an artist. He seemed unremarkable not just to his seatmate, but also to everyone. But Joe knew he was flawed and looked around the plane wondering if he was the worst person on it, or how many other people had done something unforgivable. 

He shook his head in a quick, jerky motion as if he could shake out the memory and think of something else. His nerves were jangling already as he had rushed from his last meeting in Detroit to an Uber in a frantic effort to try to get on a flight standby to New York two hours early. He had been the last person on the plane and the anxiety of the entire process had his shoulders bunched.

The familiar feeling of the plane turning ahead of the takeoff began to calm him and he craved the drink cart. He would need a few bottles of bourbon, he thought.

The image of Angie Sanger passed unbidden in front of his eyes again, and then a few other things he had done in his life. This wasn’t an altogether new phenomenon for him. Maybe it was age or just life catching up to him. He was paying penance in his mind for things he had done. His version of Crime and Punishment. He had not experienced justice or retribution. In fact, he had paid almost no price for his crimes of cruelty or poor judgment. But Joe was just good enough of a person that this good fortune caused him remorse in itself. If he had paid a price of some sort for the damage he had done, then maybe he wouldn’t be dreaming about it now. Maybe it wouldn’t be a specter behind his eyelids, lurking.

The flight attendant came close and Joe got two bourbons and dashed some Diet Coke on them before drinking them down. He probably drank them too quickly and he looked right to see if the woman next him had noticed. 

She may have. When he looked over, she was looking at him, and not unkindly. Normally, when Joe got on the plane, he was on it earlier than most people, a perk of his frequent traveler status. He rather liked to look at people walking down the aisle, wondering who they were and where they were going. The airport and airplane was a mixing bowl unlike any remaining thing in life. But this time he had been on the plane last, rushing on to get his seat before the door closed. 

His seat mate was a woman in her 50s, he thought. Big brown eyes and a sort of sensible working woman’s shoulder-length haircut. Joe could see her high school self - a beauty - hidden by age. Too much food. Too much wine. Too much life. She held knitting needles in her hands and appeared to be working on something, though he didn’t know what.

Joe smiled and raised the glass that now only held ice. “I guess I needed a bigger glass.” 

“I wish I had gotten something. I guess fate pulled that string the other way,” she said.

It was a charming, but odd statement. 

“Are you headed home or visiting New York?” Joe asked, deciding to break his normal antisocial plane protocol.

She shifted in her seat to turn slightly to Joe, prepared to chat a moment. Her brown eyes were deeply intriguing and he felt an odd, admiration for her, like finding out that she was an author of your favorite book.

“I am only visiting New York. There are a great many stories in New York. That, and the salt bagels in Grand Central Station are fantastic,” she said.

Joe smiled. “I am headed home. My daughter has a show tonight and I am hoping to get back in time to see it. It’s still a long shot, even with catching the earlier flight -- that’s why I was so anxious that I downed two bourbons -- but even with the early flight I might not make it.”

She smiled subtly and then looked back at her knitting.

“Tell me about your daughter,” she said, pulling a loop on the end of a line. 

Joe Banks finally felt at ease. Because talking about his daughter was easy. He adored her. More than his parents. More than his siblings. More than he once loved his wife. Calliope - or Calli to virtually everyone except him - was a compressed spring. She was potential energy. She had shoulder-length dark brown hair, with loose curls - and a swirling mix of hazel, green and blue eyes. The color didn’t matter much anyway because they shined with energy, or anger, or curiosity. She was without guile. Every emotion stood directly on her face. Joe was deeply entranced by her and she by him. Her connection to her father was intense and unnerving, but not in a devious or disgusting way. It was a friendship or kinship. She adored her father and he adored her. 

“My daughter is singing in a performance at school this evening,” he began. “And I will tell you a bit about what she is singing and how we got to this point and I think it may tell you what you need to know about her.” 

He shifted in his seat and looked at the woman. It was really unusual for him to speak to anyone on planes, but two bourbons may have encouraged him.

“Calliope” he said and she interrupted. “Her name is Calliope? Now that is an interesting name. The muse of epic poetry,” the woman said, pausing in her knitting and looking at Joe for a moment longer. He nodded and went on.

“So she is in the choir at school and the girls can try out for solos. The school is pretty used to getting some standard stuff. These are fourth graders, so the expectation is for about 60 seconds of singing and that’s it. Well, Calliope worked for a week on Space Oddity -- yes - the David Bowie song -- and she pretty much killed it. It was so goddamned good they couldn't say no,” Joe ended with a smile. 

“And that sums her up. When she was little I used to say she was relentless. My wife” and then he paused a moment after saying wife, a moment too long and then proceeded “told me to say ‘determined’ because it sounded better. But relentless seems more accurate.” Joe went on to describe her physical characteristics, but the woman seemed uninterested.

“I can see why it would be so important to be on this plane. I wouldn’t want to miss that performance for anything,” she said, continuing her project with deft hands that showed her expertise.

"You love her very much, I see," she said, staring at him in a way that reminded him a bit of his therapist. She was searching for something.

"Well, yeah," he said, flushing. "She's the best thing I have done so far." He said the last bit knowing that it was undeniably the truth. Calli was the best thing about him.

Angie Sanger back jumped into his head and he shivered. What if Calli ever found out. What if some kid did that to her. She was in fourth grade, just like Angie. What if Angie had a beautiful singing voice. Joe felt like scratching his arms off. His mind reeled through the things he had done in his life.

In college he brought a beer into a creative writing class on a dare. The poor, intimidated professor said nothing to him. He cheated on his college girlfriend and she was really a nice person -- just not the person for him. He lied to his boss about mistake he made that cost his company $10,000. And he failed at his marriage. Failed to mature fast enough and now he only had part time parentage over his only real success.

I am a fucking monster, he thought.

The woman nodded and Joe wasn't sure if it was for his thoughts or what he said about Calli. Embarrassed he turned away.

"You know, the great thing about kids is that we see all the promise in them and they are both our creation and reflection as well as something entirely new," the woman said. "Is Calli a lot like you?"

Joe nodded. Much to her mother's dismay, Calli shared most of Joe's interests. She had his defiance, guile and curiosity. She feared little and sometimes rubbed people the wrong way.

"There's no doubt she's like me," he said, perhaps recognizing this fact for the first time. Calli was like him, a better version, he thought.

"Well, obviously you're a great dad," she said. The woman smiled and returned to her knitting.

Joe looked at the back of the airplane seat as the words settled in on him. The plane had leveled out in the sky. He opened his phone and a selfie of Calli and him appeared on the home screen and for that moment, the specter of Angie Sanger eased away.