A SHOW OF HANDS

A Show of Hands


Room 126 at the Franklin Pierce high school turned out to be a teachers lounge. The walls were painted a day-glo taffy color that matched the big soft couches and the clumsy overstuffed chairs. A half empty vending machine stood in the corner alongside a cold gooey coffeepot. Nearby was today’s newpaper opened up to an abandoned crossword puzzle.The room had a deeply sympathetic feel to it. It was easy to imagine generations of teachers convalescing here. Bitching about the workload, smoking when that sort of thing was still allowed. Gossiping about which students would fuck anyone for a part in the school play and which ones were throwing up their lunch. Outside the door someone had hung a sign reading A.M. HERE 6:00 P.M.

“A.M.” Sterling thought dryly, ”could be anything. It could be analyzing mortage, or applied medicine, or aryan merengue.” It could be one of those extended learning classes that they teach at the YMCA. Sure, any minute now some tubby fortyish year old guy with a ponytail and an easel was going to walk through that door and give him some life enriching continuing education. Something like pilates, or good cardio through basket weaving or maybe that type of Karate where you don’t hit anybody. What else could a soft skinned man in a gray suit with $45 cufflinks be doing in an empty high school at 5:58 on a Monday evening? For the fourth time in the past seven minutes Sterling wondered what kind of person showed up first for this type of thing. He eyed one of the newspapers on the couch and spread it open. The couch was suprisingly comfortable and before Sterling really absorbed the first headline, he shut his eyes.


The rest of them arrived between 6:10 and 6:20. Six men, besides Sterling, and three women.One of the girls, a latina with pale skin, couldn’t possibly have been 18. One of the men looked like he had sailed down his fifties in a Kayak. Everyone else’s age fell somewhere in between..A tall wiry man with glasses walked to the dry erase board. He opened his hands and smiled.”My name is Matt and this is the group counseling portion of the state of Rhode Island’s anger management program.” This was greeted by a few toetaps, some gum snapping, and a polite fart.”Before we get started,” Matt said “let me get a show of hands...and by the way if you don’t feel comfortable sharing you don’t have to raise your hand. How many of you are here today because you are required to in some way shape or form?” Every single hand in the room shot up. “How many of you are here stemming from an incident in the workplace?” Kayak man and another guy raised their hands.”What about domestic violence?” Almost all the other hands, including Sterling, raised at this one.”Anyone here because of something involving a restraining order?” Some hands stayed others dropped. “How about a case involving the custody of a child?” The latina and a beefy red haired man on Sterling’s left poked up for this one. “Anyone just show up cause they wanted to?” He laughed as he asked. “Of course not. No one ever does. Why do you guys think that is? You have a problem with drugs or drinking most people eventually check themselves into a rehab clinic or start going to AA. But with anger issues, something far more common, no one ever gets help until they’re forced to.” Matt paused, perhaps waiting for applause. If anyone else in the room considered this to be a profound observation they kept it to themselves.”But rage is an addiction,” Matt continued. “If you get nothing else out of these next three weeks I hope you get that.. Anger comes from the same part of the brain that needs alcohol or dope.It is part of our compensation instinct.” A man in a checkered shirt and a Red Sox cap raised his hand.
“Does this mean we’ve all got to like go around and say like ‘hi, I’m Brian and I’m a rageaholic?’ The guys accent bent the a’s and r’s into little pieces turning each word into a minor heart attack.
“Good question,” Matt replied. “There are some similarities between this program and AA. Obviously we’re not an anonymous program. Everyone will be asked to give their name and talk a little bit about whatever incident or incidents brought them here. But no, you won’t be asked to classify yourself or give-“
”Oh, and that other thing,” the man’s voice kicked through Matt’s like an 18 wheeler merging lanes with a tricycle. “Are we gonna have to do that thing where someone says ‘hi I’m whoeverdafuck and I’m angry and then everyone else goes ‘hi whoeverdafuck’ cause I’m gonna tell you right now I’n not doing that. It’s stupid.”


Morris would be home by now Sterling thought. Mondays were slow days at the museum and Morris normally got off around fivc or so. Sterling was sure that Morris would be washing the dishes or folding napkins when he walked through the door. He was also sure Morris would pretend not to know where Sterling was right now. He really loved that about Morris. Instead he’d say something mild. “Day go alright?” Something like that. Then Sterling would make a little joke along the lines of “they shouldn’t call it a law firm. They should call it a law factory. Just clients and cases rolling off an assembly line and I’m just rubber stamping them for billable hours.”

Recently Sterling had come to see his whole life like that. A series of clever little jokes where no one laughed He didn’t mind so much. It was.a polite, ordinary life. But more importantly it felt to him like a normal one After 34 years of different, normal was all the high Sterling ever wanted to feel. He had cut himself out a clean and peaceful part of the universe. The only evidence suggesting otherwise was the lisp Morris spoke with now. The punch had blown out three of his upper teeth. One landed in the garbage disposal and the other two had gone down Morris’s throat. Now, when he talked there was a distinct hum in his voice. But that was all. Other than the lisp and his prescence tonight in room 126 there was no proof that that night had even ocurred. All the other marks were fading nicely.


The Red Sox guy was there cause of a bar fight. Kayak man dropped some papers off on a woman’s desk and she said he threw them at her. A black kid had accidentally parked in some lady’s spot and when he came out the rightful owner had blocked him in. When Matt asked him what his response was he gave a what-do-you-think-my-response-was shrug. “I set that bitch on fire yo,” he said. When this got a worried hush he amended himself. “The car, yo. The car not her. I ain’t crazy.” Everyone was jammed up. No one was really that angry. Two guys had an almost identical story. She came at me with a knife and when I took it away from her she slipped. Sterling thought he saw Matt’s eyes roll a little when that one came back around. Circumstances. That was the big theme. Circumstances. Yes, I wish I had it to do over again. Yes, things got out of hand. But no one wants to take into account the incredible supersonic power of one thing leading into another. Sterling paid the most attention to the latina.She was the only one who didn’t seem quite ready to drive down that road. She told her story with her head down and her eyes on her fingers.She had thrown her son into a wall. Picked him up and thrown him like a basketball player delivering a chest pass to an open man. His kindergarten teacher saw the whole thing and called the cops.
“I guess,” she said, “hate’s always been more of a motivator for me than love.”
“Explain that,” Matt asked.
“I guess, you know,” she said moving her eyes from the floor to the ceiling. “It’s like when you love someone, really all you’re doing is hoping you love them. You think you feel it. You hope they love you They say they do. Cool. But hate, that’s real you know what I’m saying. You can’t deny that. It’s the truth. It’s like right there.”


Sterling remembered trying to give an explanation to the cops while they were taking his fingerprints. The tears had overcome the words but he kept trying. Finally, one of the older cops put his hand on Sterling’s shoulder. “Hey, man,” he said with genuine concern, “It’s really not important why you and your...well why the two of you were fighting.” Sterling remembered thinking that its funny how respectful of your privacy police get after you’re in the handcuffs. “After,” Sterling said to himself, some days it felt like the only word he ever knew. The girl was right. Hate had found him in a way nothing else ever had. All of it: the same, the different, the pain, the humiliation, the during, the after, the one thing breaknecking its way to get to the other; maybe it all meant something. Maybe it was the shape of love. Maybe.


“Ok,” Matt continued turning to him.. “Why don’t you tell us a little about why you’re here tonight.”
“My name is Sterling,” he said. “And I hit someone very hard.”