Tears

It's been a cold, gray, rainy day today, a perfect day for soup and tears. Yes, a good cry today would feel empathetic and, as usual, cathartic. But I wish sadness on no one, so I'll provide some vicarious tears for you all to cry. Following the jump you'll find a couple-pages excerpt from a novel I've written called Zeal Outruns Discretion. It's about life at an all-girls high school, where tears flow a lot, for reasons both sad and absurd. I must admit, I stole the basic idea for this scene from a guy I used to work with, Tom, who had originated the "crying circle" explanation. I took his idea and extrapolated it to the extreme. All in good fun.

So grab some tissues, fix yourself something warm to eat or drink, and have a good cry, on me.

Charlie Rich-Tears A Go-Go

Tears—and the wildly fluctuating sources of pain that induce them—are a valuable, if inflated currency at girls schools. You rarely see them at boys schools, and when you do they’re usually embarrassed ones, with more than a hint of violence beneath them. If you care to seek them out, though, tears at girls schools can be found hourly. At first—especially if you’re a man, I guess—they scare you tremendously. I remember my initial tear-fright, my first week of teaching at Lankton Oaks. It was before classes had even started one morning, and I was innocently walking out of the English office to get some copying done. Tammie Elarton was panting and heaving and sobbing in the combined arms of Sara Tsantes and Sarah Covington, right in the middle of the hall. Not knowing the kids that well, I froze, wondering how I could help, thinking that somebody must have died—a father, a friend, somebody close. I stood five feet from the entangled sob—both Sara(h)s were now teary—but none of the girls noticed me. To tell you how early in my L.O. tenure it was, in my panic I actually ran to the main office, thinking the situation called for an administrator, that only an administrator could help.

The first person I saw was the admissions director, Will Schultz, who was in the middle of showing his secretary, Dee Adio, how to make a folding paper football.

“Um, Will, I don’t mean to interrupt, but there’s a girl outside, Tammie Elarton, I think, crying pretty badly.”

“Okay.”

“And, I, I don’t know what to do. It looks pretty serious.”

“Tammie, hunh?” He gave a quick glance to Dee, but didn’t move. “Is anyone with her?”

“Yeah. Sara Tsantes and Sarah Covington.”

“Ah, the Sara(h)s. Good.” Dee let out a quick laugh. He looked at her with all seriousness. “Code 1, if that.” He then looked at me, grimly. “Come with me.” He put his arm around my shoulders and without looking stuck out his other arm; with perfect timing, Dee placed a box of Kleenex in his hand, and the two of us men walked toward the office door. “I will be your guide, neophyte male, through your maiden voyage into the Valley of Tears. Take heed. This will be my only assistance with anything less than a Code 5.”

Outside in the hall, things seemed only to have intensified. There must have been twenty or thirty girls now clustered around, mostly voiceless except for a few whispers, but mostly moist-eyed. I felt the hollow, heavy feeling in my guts that I had felt a couple years before when I was teaching boys and it was announced that Sean O’Reilly, a senior, had killed himself the night before. That had easily been the most difficult day of my teaching life, as boys—for once—cried unashamedly and deeply. As Schultz steered me to a wall just outside of the crying throng of girls, I thought about how unprepared I was to conduct grief sessions instead of regular classes with these teenaged girls. It was going to be a torturous day, I knew. Schultz positioned the two of us against the wall, still with his left arm around my shoulders, and absently held the box of tissues in his right hand, which hung by his side. As if expecting them, the girls started gobbling up the Kleenex without acknowledging our presence.

“You must learn to respond much more quickly, Mr. Garvey. We’re much too late to offer any real assistance—let alone comfort—thank God. The circles have formed.”

“Circles?”

“Yes, observe. As the moon revolves around the Earth, and the Earth in turn revolves around the Sun, nature dictates that there always be three circles of crying at a girls school. Or, to put it in religious terms, if you’re a Creationist by chance, wherever two girls are gathered in tears, twenty will soon join in circular sympathy. At the center, the nexus, is the Core Sob, the Hub Crier plus one or two intimate supporters.” I looked at his face. Only a slight twitch of his graying goatee betrayed his utter amusement. “Next we have the Crust of Care-giving, the group of six to eight girls, definitely crying, offering critical support to the core. Notice how Bridget Hopkins and Ariana Smoot are gently kneading Sarah Covington’s shoulders. Covington, who is not the Hub Crier, but part of the core. As you apparently have discovered earlier this cry, to be in direct contact with the Hub Crier is a very emotionally taxing role. The crust signifies the deep, wide bonds of very real friendship every girl here at L.O. relies on—through good times and bad—that is a salient, value-added vital part of our marketing plan.”

“Thank you, Mr. Schultz.” Tracy Kilbane plucked a tissue from Will’s box.

“See, our tertiary—at best—support does not go unrecognized.”

“And the third circle?”

“The Sadness Satellite. Most intriguing, and probably the circle that most stimulates the sociologist. Stray tears, but no real crying. Physical contact minimal—by girls school standards: hand holding, arms around shoulders.” He patted his own hand on my shoulder. “But no head on shoulders. No real contact with the crust. They are a ring of dancers around the newlyweds, perhaps. A community role in the ritual, really—but not just merely. Watch how girls just arriving in the hall immediately drop their book bags and join the satellite. This is social empathy, true community. I honor your tears because soon they will be my tears. This is telethon for hurricane victims activity. Stop and stand and say a quick prayer—if you will—as the hearse drives by. Notice very little conversation among the satellites. Ignorant of the Hub Crier’s pain though they may be, they still pause to bond, support, to share the pain.”

“Well what did happen?”

“Ah, Mr. Garvey,” Schultz said, squeezing my shoulder, “one must first know the correct question to ask before one receives the answer.” I felt like Dante in the arms of Vergil. “This is a ‘what’s wrong’ cry, hardly a ‘what happened’ one. The differences are subtle but key to providing the proper ancillary—or interventionist—support. This is a rather static cry. The core is intact, the crust inner-directed, the satellite peacefully quiet. With the proper community response—as we see here—quite frankly, the girls are in mid-season form the first week of school, pretty darn impressive—the Hub Crier is slowly calming, draining if you will. What you—obviously—took to be uncontrolled sobs are nothing of the sort. Slow to control, perhaps, but being controlled, no doubt. The circles know their limits instinctively, and this cry is well within their capabilities. The only reaching out in this case is literal, for the tissues. No one has broken ranks and screeched off like a meteor for outside, adult help. Thus, these signs, among others too arcane for your tyrol eyes, tell us this is a ‘what’s wrong’ cry. An angry mother on the way to school, too little sleep/too many tests, a friend’s non-laudatory comments on a haircut, a broken printer at home—those kinds of ‘meltdowns’—that’s the realm of woe we’re dealing with here. Strictly Code 1, maybe Code 2 stuff. Now if we had movement outward, especially from the crust, or if the Hub Crier’s sobs intensified—truly uncontrollable—after the never-admitted but positively desired result of the establishment of the three circles brings the tears to crest stage and then slow diminishment, or if the satellite breaks down into mini solar systems of its own—multiple hub criers—then we know something has truly ‘happened.’ The death of a pet will cause a ripple effect of solar system cries like you wouldn’t believe. Maybe a boyfriend has cheated or broken up. Maybe the original Hub Crier has dented the car getting to school. These are Code 3 or Code 4 ‘what happened’ cries. Manageable, but—on our part—demanding more intervention than the Kleenex proffering, i.e. taking the girl into an office, crowd dispersal, getting a female adult, et al.”

“How many codes are there?”
“Realistically, five. Theoretically, six.” Schultz took his arm off my shoulder and turned to face me. “Five is the real deal. Death—human—divorce, anorexia or pregnancy news, one of the really fragile ones truly breaking down. You’ll know. After a few more Code 1’s, you’ll know. In a Code 5 the circles don’t really form, as if the outsiders don’t want to know or know they’re incapable. Stunned silence as opposed to respectful silence. The core reaches out. You get them out of the way, into the office, where we—the high-salaried ones—administer primary care. Then you go back out and do triage on the crowd. Tissues alone won’t do.”

“And six?”
“Chaos. Catastrophic. Every man for himself, seat of the pants response. Unplannable because unthinkable. After I retire, I hope.” Sure enough, on 9/11, Code 6 hit. Schultz was stellar, organizing an all-upper school meeting to state the facts. Coordinating all the phone calls. I sat with a group of about twelve kids, trying to persuade them that we wouldn’t be a target, actually getting them to write, all the while worrying about my college roommate, Pete McGuire, who works on Wall Street.

By now it was close to eight—morning meeting would be starting in a couple minutes. The circles started to gradually break up, girls in tight-contact clumps drifted to the Chapel. Tammie Elarton was visible again, wiping away tears, nervously laughing and nodding her head in the affirmative. Will Schultz shook the box of Kleenex, weighing it. “Code 1, all in all. Watch this.” He motioned to Gita Patel, who was breaking off from the crust. She came over and took a last tissue, though she no longer had any visible tears.

“Tammie’s sister is homesick at Colby.”

“I see.”

Gita walked away from us, just as matter-of-factly as she had spoken, and Schultz tucked the Kleenex box under one arm and once again put his other arm on my shoulder. “Congratulations, John. You survived. And as long as you don’t come running for help again for anything less than a Code 4, I will allow you to keep this as a memento, no a certificate in recognition of passing the Lankton Oaks Crying Indoctrination Course. Treasure it.” With that he handed me the half-empty box of Kleenex, patted me on the back, and walked back to his office. I smiled and proudly carried the box into the department office and placed it on the highest shelf above my desk, where it still sits, dusty and untouched eight years later with a pink tissue still poking out of it—waiting for my own first real L.O. meltdown cry. The day of my retirement, I hope