at me. “Is this for real?”
I suppose, if you hadn’t been at the brainstorming session, this might seem a little random. I shrugged. “It’s not forever. Just the spring semester.”
“What happens after that?”
“Good question. She reserves the right to fire you, anyway. But maybe she won’t. She’ll definitely fire you right now if you don’t go along with it, though. So: worth it to take the deal.”
“What is this called? Is this extortion?” He thought about it. “Bribery? Blackmail?”
“I think they call this ‘the kindness of strangers.’”
“Doesn’t feel all that kind.”
“Babette wanted me to mention that she’s a benevolent ruler.”
“Great,” Duncan said, giving me a look.
“So?” I said. “Are you in?”
“Well,” Duncan said, “given that I don’t have a choice … I guess I have to be.”
eighteen
And so began Operation Duncan.
We had a chance to rescue him—and possibly ourselves, as well.
And oh, man, was it fun.
We told Duncan to eat a frozen custard? He ate a frozen custard. We told him to do a handstand in the courtyard? He did a handstand in the courtyard. We told him to tell cringe-worthy math jokes over the school intercom (that one was Alice)? He told math jokes over the intercom.
It was true we had him boxed in—hard. But he sure didn’t put up much of a fight. As far as I know, he never even thought about trying to expose us to Kent Buckley, or anyone else. On some level, I think, he was glad to go along with it.
Maybe even relieved.
For our part, Babette and I did a lot of strategizing about how to structure his journey. We wanted to push him to open up, to try forgotten things, to relax, to feel some feelings, and a million other things—but we didn’t want to push him so hard he got spooked.
We started with small things—easy things.
Every morning, I’d pop by his office with his “thing” for the day. That first week, it was: eat a hot fudge sundae (to help him remember pleasure), jump on a pogo stick (to help him remember who he used to be), take a hot bath (to help him relax), watch a Bill Murray movie of his choosing (to get him laughing), and, on Friday, to juggle something—anything—for the kids at lunchtime (because juggling used to be his favorite thing to do). Duncan’s rented house didn’t have a bathtub, so Babette made him come to her house after school that evening, and then, while he was there, she insisted he stay for dinner (human connection). Likewise for the Bill Murray movie (Duncan chose Meatballs). Babette required that he watch it at her place so we could confirm the task was done. And since he was there, anyway, we fed him dinner and then joined him on the couch (friendship).
Alice came, too.
Babette and I took this project very seriously. We made a color-coded chart for all his required tasks—I’m not even kidding. Laughter was yellow, relaxation was pink, his old self was blue. We had four months, roughly, not counting spring break, and we wanted to make the most of them. On top of that, we read self-help books about overcoming trauma, about PTSD, about finding ways to move forward in life. We read, we highlighted, we took notes and discussed.
At no point did it occur to us that we might be doing any of this for ourselves.
But of course, it helped us, too.
We all needed to move on. We all needed to overcome trauma. We all needed hot baths and good laughs. Granted, I couldn’t juggle, but watching Duncan finally do it that Friday at lunch in front of all the kids—was just as good, if not better.
“It’s juggling day,” I said to him pleasantly, during lunch duty.
He did not fight me.
“Kids!” he shouted, standing up to get their attention. “Who wants to see me juggle?”
A great cheer went up in the room.
Duncan walked around the room, snaking between the tables, picking up items off the kids’ lunch trays. He took a red apple from a fifth-grader and started tossing it up and down as he kept walking, prowling for other things to gather.
“What should I juggle?” he asked the room over and over, as the kids watched him and shouted out suggestions: A salt shaker! A glass of milk! A cupcake!
“I’m choosing round things,” he called out to the room, “because they’re easier. And it’s been a long, long, long, long…” He paused to look around the room, and then kept going: “long, long, long