Friendswood (15 page)

“I know. I've had a talk with him.” He felt Ida Johnson's scolding was meant for him, as if she somehow knew about the time Hal got so drunk on Jack Daniel's he lay down in the middle of the street, weeping and yelling at a stray yellow dog that had followed him, until a car stopped and a man whose name and face he didn't remember took him home. Or the time he ran out of booze and went driving looking for more, when he broke out the window of his buddy Scott's house with a wrench and crawled through broken glass to find the bar.

“You know that normally we suspend a boy for this.”

“As well you should.” He heard the weariness in his voice.

“I've told him he won't get another chance. This is a forgiveness gift. We're suspending him, just for two weeks. It should be longer, and it's up to Coach Salem whether or not he plays. But there won't be another gift like this. I think he understands.”

“Well, alright.” He blew out a sigh, dropped the paper clip in the trash can.

“He's a good boy,” she said. “But he's got to know he's good.”

She reminded him of his uncle Earle, who'd been in the military and come back from Vietnam grinning, with flag pins for the boys and bracelets for the girls, his posture erect and his stories with morals at the end. Hal had always called him “sir.”

T
HAT NIGHT HE SAT
DOWN
with his son in the living room, turned off
SportsCenter
on the TV. Darlene was upstairs, rustling around in the laundry room. Outside on the street, there was an irritated honk from a Mack truck coming to that light at the intersection. Cully lay on the couch, his huge feet up on the armrest, hands folded piously on his flat T-shirted stomach. Darlene's magazines lay splayed on the coffee table. That cute young celebrity, he couldn't remember her name, her bright eyes spangled with makeup, her nose pretty as the inside of a flower. Now why would she want to do that? Just beneath her pointed chin, she held the blade of a knife to her throat.

“Son, I want you to know you don't get a lot of chances. You just got another one this week, and I think you know what I'm talking about.”

He tried to sound firm and smart—but the whole time he was talking he felt the sloppiness of his own drunken period seep through the words. Hal was ashamed to admit how many times his son must have seen him drunk. He prayed,
Help me, Jesus. Amen.

“I know, Dad.” Cully's eyes were tired and red. “I'm sorry. I won't mess up.”

“You've still got a shot at a scholarship, but not if you keep up this nonsense.”

“I won't. I'm going to keep steady.” He made a fist in the air, but it looked weak.

Hal tossed the Bible on the couch. “Here's the good book. Don't do anything you're going to regret later. That's the problem with drinking—it's a regret machine. You sure you got your head on straight?”

Cully nodded.

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah.”

There was just a thin hint of fear in his voice, a quaver, and at this, Hal inwardly rejoiced.

T
HAT NIGHT
L
EE
had a long, slow dream in which Jess was a lamb, weaving among the speeding cars on Route 2351, and she had to watch her be crushed again and again, until gradually she turned into a small sun, a tiny ball of fire on the TV that bounced over the words of a song she couldn't read.

The phone rang. “Don't hang up,” Jack said.

Her eyes were still unfocused, and in the dark, the bright blue curtains on the windows seemed to swell with wind, though the windows were shut and the air conditioner was on.

“Why?”

“Why'd I call?”

“Why would I do that?”

“You have before, darlin', don't you remember?”

“Oh.”

She fought back the pull of sleep, sat up with the phone to her ear. For a moment, she thought she saw some kind of animal perched on the dresser, a cat that had got in through the window or something, but then she realized it was only a pile of dirty clothes. The dead blare of the air-conditioning seemed to coat the room in a fuzzy substance.

“What is it, Jack? It's the middle of the night.” She wondered if he'd been drinking this time.

“I just gotta ask you, why is it that we're not together right now? Why is it that I'm not there in that bed with you?”

“You left me, remember that?”

She missed the solidness of his body more than anything, the long tapered fingers with sharp knuckles, the calluses on the palms. The leg he limped on was just slightly skinnier than the other, and he led with that leg when he moved to get on top of her, his shoulders muscled, though thinner in middle age. He smelled like smoke and deodorant, and scattered hairs pressed against her cheek when she laid her head on his chest.

“That was a long time ago. I didn't mean it.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, you were acting crazy then.”

“What makes you think anything's changed?”

“Talking to you like this. I can tell.”

“Maybe you're crazy now too. Ever think of that?”

“No.” He sighed. “I did have this weird thing happen to me the other day. I walked into this little grocery store to buy some milk, and in the next aisle, there were these two women I didn't know. I'd never seen them before. But I just knew they were talking about me. It was a real strong feeling.”

“I think you're paranoid. What did they say?”

“One said, ‘He was born in Nacogdoches but he tells everyone he's from Beaumont.'”

“You do that.”

“I know! And then the other one said, ‘I don't know how he could leave her like that, just up and leave after everything.'”

She didn't want to say anything to this. She didn't trust it. She looked up at the ceiling, at the mossy dark. She remembered that trip they took to Mexico, down to Oaxaca. They'd stayed in a hotel that had once been a rope factory, and at the hotel restaurant patio, they ate ceviche, looking out over huge bright pink flowers, like wadded, cheap panties, and palm
trees, solemn by comparison. The owners came out and sat with them, bought them drinks, talked to them about Texas, and then they all played a game of pool in the back room. She remembered the man wore a Texas flag pin on the lapel of his elegant suit, and the woman had a cheerful gap between her two square front teeth that showed every time she laughed.

“She's in the next room, so I can't talk long.” He was whispering now. She'd always loved his full-throated loudness on the phone. “But, goddamnit, tell me again why she liked that stinker, the one with the bowling-ball head and blond hair?”

“You mean Louie King.”

“Yeah, that one. I could smell him all the way down the block.”

For that Mexico vacation, they were truly alone for the first time in months, her body leaned toward his in the heat, their bodies shiny with sweat. They sped down the heat of that empty highway in a small car, and he reached over and squeezed her knee, cacti coming up on the horizon like giant green men holding up pistols.

“All the girls liked him. He played football. He had that handsome face.”

“You thought he was good lookin'?”

“Not me. But I know what girls like at that age. He was harmless probably. Not like the other one.”

“That guy. I almost kicked his teeth out and sewed them to his eyeballs.”

“You're drunk.”

“I am. Had a good reason to get that way.” Her hand made a fist, and she pressed her nails into her palm.

“What's that, Jack?”

“I don't want to go into it. You ever see bowling-ball head around town anymore?”

“Not usually. But by chance, I did run into him the other day.”

“Where?”

“Just saw him getting lunch over at Bob's—he had a suit on, didn't recognize me.” So many of Jess's old friends didn't notice her anymore—they'd forgotten what she looked like, or maybe without Jess, she was invisible to them.

“Figures. Tell me, why is it that Jess had such bad taste in boys? I mean, look at me.” He laughed and then snorted in his habitual way.

“You always were modest.”

“I miss you.”

“Where's Cindy?”

“Oh . . . she's in the next room. Snoring. You never snored. You kicked. Kicked like I was a football. Now I'm sitting here in this room, and you know what? The walls remind me of football fields.”

He sounded very tired. She could hear the slur in his voice “How?”

“I can see the plays on them. Anyway, what have you been doing with yourself down there? How's that Doc?”

“He's fine.”

“Still have that piece on the side?”

“I don't know. He doesn't tell me.”

“Probably. You can't even recognize the wife anymore. Plastic lips. Rubber titties. I'd rather get me a blow-up doll.”

“Jack.”

“What? I would. So what do you do all day?”

She knew what he was asking, but she wasn't going to let him know whether or not she was seeing anyone.

“I've got some plans for a project. It's going to keep me occupied, hopefully get me past the seventh.”

“For another year anyway, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You're not writing those pissed-off letters again are you? Because, I tell you what, those suckers in the government, the last thing they want to hear is from a pissed-off lady.”

“No, not that. I told you what I found. And now there's research that
might actually go somewhere.” She wouldn't go into the details because he didn't appreciate them. “I'll let you know how it goes.”

“You do that.” He started coughing. “Hey.” He couldn't catch his breath. “I'll call again next week. If I can.”

“You mean if you can get away from Cindy?”

He coughed some more and then was silent. She could hear the electronic waves on the phone like a rhythm of water. Sometimes they had these long silences between them on the phone, and it was strangely comfortable, almost as if they were back in their old living room, one of them just lying on the couch, the other sitting up in the easy chair.

“Jack.”

“Yeah.”

“You take care.”

T
H
EY'D BEEN SITTING
at home that night. Hard to believe it was another lovely, ordinary night of iced tea and television and library books. Jess ran in the house and said, “There's moving vans parked in every single driveway of South Hill Street.” In the faint lines around Jess's mouth, Lee could see she was scared. This was just when she had the sore throat that wouldn't go away.

“It's all this hysteria,” said Jack. “Everyone will move back eventually.” They didn't know it then, but two babies had just been born on the same street, one boy with an arm that ended at the elbow and one girl who had no reproductive organs. On Cherry Street, four people had sudden liver problems, though they didn't know what was causing the pain under the rib cage and the itchiness in their hands. Other people noticed red-and-blue sores on their necks and forearms. A teenage boy on Hawk Street came down with a high fever and deep cough that would not lift. A week after Jess saw the moving vans, Lee, Jack, and Jess left their home too. They'd told themselves it was just temporary at first, just a precaution,
and then little by little, they moved out all the furniture. Lee went back to their house alone one day, to pack up the last of their things, and she saw the garbage truck and the mail truck racing through the streets—only a handful of the houses weren't empty. Doors and windows were boarded up, stray cats roamed yards overgrown with bright yellow dandelions, and the emptiness felt like a recrimination.

A
T HOME ON
S
ATURDAY,
Lee poured the dregs of her coffee into the sink, the grounds catching on the white porcelain like stilled bugs. She ran the water, let it cool her fingers. She'd written to Cass Brown, to see if she had the name of the EPA rep who'd been coming around to see some of the old Rosemont people. Cass wrote back about how well her son had done at UT. “Now he's thinking of med school, and if he gets in, we can afford it.” She didn't get to the EPA rep until the bottom of the note. “It was such a quick visit from him, but I finally found his card. Lloyd Steeburn. Here's his number.” Lee would call this Steeburn as soon as she had her facts, as soon as Professor Samuels gave her the new readings. She wouldn't talk to him until she was well armed.

Someone knocked and she went to answer the door in her bare feet, her shirt untucked. It was that neighbor Hal. Flushed and grinning. Behind him, the dogwood tree sagged around the lower branches, and the grass that needed cutting was turning brown.

“Howdy,” he said. There were dark patches of red, broken blood vessels at his cheekbones that made him look just bruised. “You know I heard about something at work—and I said, well, Ms. Knowles is my neighbor. I should just go on over and talk to her about it.”

“You live in that gray house,” she said.

“Sure do. I guess you know my wife, used to go by Miss Dobb?”

“Oh, Miss Dobb! She was my daughter's second-grade teacher.”

“That's right.”

She'd thrown a party for the class when the jar of marbles was full, each marble marking a “good deed,” and Jess, though she'd been devoted to her, had once been punished for stealing marbles and putting them in the jar, unearned.

“I hear you have some issues with Taft Properties building over there near Banes Field. And, believe you me, I can see why you'd have them. It was a tragedy what happened to Rosemont. All those homes.”

“I don't just have some issues. I used to live there.”

“You know, I heard that too. I'm real sorry about that.” His mouth twisted to the side, and he seemed to be waiting for her to say it was all okay.

“Say—” He paused, seemed to be testing her. “My wife and me got to talking, and we thought we'd see if maybe you'd like to go to church with us sometime. We belong over there to the Victory Temple. Lots of real friendly people.”