The Most Beautiful Word in the English Language

Kyra Cullinan
(kyrac [AT] sympatico.ca)

fandom: donnie darko
summary: Living in the aftermath.
story notes: Written for Bowdlerized for Yuletide 2004. Karen Pomeroy/Kenneth Monnitoff. (The English teacher and the physics teacher.) Explanatory notes at the end.

*

Vertigo when she opens her eyes, this long waking up moment when nothing seems real. Deep, hazy dreams, dark and important and vanishing even as she tries to focus on them. She can't remember what day it is, and the clock radio is talking about a plane crash or the FAA or -- something.

She takes too long in the shower, heavy with deja vu. When she gets out, Ken is standing in the doorway in his boxers, scratching his head sleepily. He leans toward her as she wraps the towel around herself, but she ducks by him into the bedroom.

"I think I used all the hot water," she says. "You're allowed to hate me for at least a day."

When she gets to school, one of her students is dead.

*

At the memorial assembly three days later, Kitty Farmer gives a long, histrionic speech about God's mysterious ways and the need for the community to pull together and support the things Donnie loved, which is of course actually a list of things Kitty Farmer approves of.

"And finally, the dedication of the brave little girls -- including Donnie's own sister -- in Middlesex Ridge School's award-winning dance troupe Sparklemotion."

She hiccups and dabs at her eyes with a crumpled Kleenex. Karen slides down a little more in her chair, lets her knee rest against Ken's. He smells like aftershave and laundry detergent. She closes her eyes and for a moment he could be anyone.

When she opens them, he glances over at her, rolls his eyes just the tiniest bit, and just like that they're both themselves again. In the corner of the auditorium Seth Devlin and Ron Fisher are throwing spitballs at Cherita Chen, whose back is very straight as she pretends to ignore them. She turns her head, and Karen can see that her face is red and wet.

*

He's grading papers on the back porch when she bangs the door open with her hip. He looks up when she holds out a beer and takes it with a raised eyebrow and tight grin. She moves around him to sit on the railing, rests her feet on the arm of his chair, and watches him drain the neck of the bottle in one swig. It's colder out and she pulls the sleeves of her sweater down over her wrists before taking a sip of her own beer.

In the half-darkness Ken is not so much grading as staring at the top paper on the pile, pen jiggling between his fingers.

"What's that?" she asks.

"Test. Last week's," he says, without looking up, so she leans over to look. 'Donnie D.' is scrawled in the corner in black ink. Ken follows her gaze and flips quickly to the second, the third page.

"He thinks the earth is 90,000 miles from the sun," he says, still not looking at her. "Pretty toasty."

"Last month he read aloud a poem by William Butler Yeets," she says. He looks at her then, and she slides her feet down to rest on his thigh. After a moment he puts down his pen, wraps a hand around her ankle, big and warm. She tilts her beer bottle toward him, smirking a little.

"Donnie," she says, and he shakes his head, smiling, and clinks the neck of his bottle with hers.

"Donnie," he answers, his voice wry, and they both drink. On the next block, someone revs an engine and the sound tears through the darkness, fading on the air as it moves further away.

*

Kitty Farmer is hysterical in the teacher's lounge.

"I can't believe he would just give into fear like that!" she gibbers against the school secretary's shoulder.

"Who?" Karen whispers to Ken, who's leaning against the wall.

"Jim Cunningham," he says. "Self-help guy. He wrote part of her curriculum, I think. Lived right here in town. Shot himself."

"Huh," she says, and glances back at Kitty as she and Ken walk out. She forgets all about it until the news that night reports that among his holdings police happened to discover a kiddie porn dungeon.

"Oh, that's nice," she says, and Ken winces.

"What a great guy."

*

"This is a weird town," she says in bed that night, chin resting on his bare shoulder in the darkness. "Why'd you move here anyway?"

"Because it's a weird town," he says, and rolls over to face her. "Why do you think?"

And kisses her, 'til she forgets to ask anything else, which she's pretty much okay with.

*

She votes before school, in the fire station where three booths are partitioned by curtains so dingy and tattered they probably saw people voting for Roosevelt. Both of them, she thinks darkly as she pushes it open, drops her ballot in the box and stares back at the suspicious election lady.

Dukakis loses. Ken sits with her on the couch as they watch the states go one by one to Bush. She turns off the tv in disgust three times, but turns it back on every time.

They spend a rewarding ten minutes mocking Tom Brokaw's hair and she settles for peeling off her "I Voted" sticker and tearing it into tiny pieces.

"Homeroom wanted to know who I voted for," Ken says conversationally, watching her.

"What did you tell them? The guy less likely to blow up the world over a nuclear dick measuring contest?" she asks, watching the sticker shred betwen her thumbnails.

"Yes," he says. "Except it was phrased more like, 'I can't discuss that with you under school policy.'"

She looks at him and he shrugs.

"I think they should know what's being kept from them."

"Right," she says, and turns back to look at the tv. Not seeing anything. He's been strange lately, and she can't tell if it's about Donnie or if he's just getting sick of her or if it's something else entirely. She suddenly hates him, his caution, his mysterious old job in DC that he'll never talk about, these moments when the distance between them on the couch makes her feel cold and sick.

*

They fire her in December and she's only half-surprised. Or entirely surprised or not at all, depending on how she looks at it. Angry more than anything. Bastards, all of them, small-minded and viscious.

She doesn't cry, because they're not worth it. She does tell Principal Cole and Kitty fucking Farmer to go fuck themselves six kinds of ways, if only in her head. She does take the flag from her classroom, because she's not about to leave them anything, any part of her.

The flag catches on the doorjamb as she struggles outside with her box. She wrenches it free, lets the door slam behind her, and breathes in the cold gray parking lot air. They fired her over Salinger, though it could have been anyone. But she feels a sudden burst of affinity for Holden Caulfield, the little bastard. Prep school rejects the both of them. She doesn't notice Gretchen Ross curled up on the steps until she speaks.

"It's true? They really fired you?" she asks, twisting around to look up at Karen. Thin, pale face and reddened eyes. Karen tries to remember how long it's been since her mother died. Or was murdered, depending on which rumors you listen to. Maybe a month.

She shifts the box to her hip and looks down at Gretchen. Keeps her voice flat.

"It's true. They really fired me."

"But that's crazy," Gretchen says, frowning. "You're the best teacher here."

"THANK you!" Karen hears herself say, indignant all over again. Something about the moment feels vaguely familiar but she chalks it up to the cold air, the white sky.

"What should I tell the other kids?" Gretchen asks. Across the parking lot Joanie and two of her friends are watching them.

"Tell them," she shifts the box to both hands again and starts to walk down the steps. "Tell them it's all going to be okay." And for a second she really, truly means it.

She walks steadily to her car and doesn't look back once.

*

"You're better than them anyway," Ken tells her over the phone but she doesn't believe he really means it. After all, he's still there.

"Yeah," she says, twisting the phone cord around her finger. "I am."

*

Reading the obituaries the day after Christmas -- cheerful, she thinks, then pauses as her eye catches on the school's name.

"Hey," she says and across the table Ken looks up, mouth full of toast. "Roberta Sparrow. She used to teach at Middlesex Ridge. Didn't she write that book you're always carrying around? The time travel one?"

He finishes chewing and swallows.

"The Philosophy of Time Travel," he says, and drags the paper across to look. "Yeah," he says after a long moment. "That's her."

"So is this the loss of one of the greatest literary minds of Middlesex, Virginia?" she asks, teasing, but his voice is serious when he answers.

"Who knows?" he says, and then he smiles and pokes at her hand and she grins and kicks him a little under the table until he gives her back the paper.

***

Notes: Much of the canon included in this is based on information from the official movie website and deleted scenes. According to them, in the righted universe, Jim Cunningham shoots himself 10 days after Donnie's death, Roberta Sparrow dies on Christmas day and Karen Pommeroy gets a job at UVA and marries Kenneth Monnitoff. They have two daughters before Ken is killed when his car is run off the road by, it's implied, the CIA, who he used to work for, and from whom he apparently took Roberta Sparrow's book. According to instructions in his will, Karen sends the book to the rare books division of the Library of Congress to find "a safe place for it. A place where they can never find it."

Phew. And you thought the story ended with the movie.

--

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