Going to Bend (24 page)

“And if you find something wrong with my boy?” Eddie said.

The teacher pressed the palms of her hands together. “We don’t think of learning challenges—disabilities—as
wrong
, Mr. Coolbaugh. We know a lot more now than we did when you were in grade school yourself. Early intervention can make all the difference. And we might not find anything at all. I simply want to be thorough. A diagnosis at his age
can make all the difference in helping him with lifelong learning skills and self-esteem issues.”

“Mrs. Hendrik—forgive me, Nan—let’s cut through the shit,” said Eddie. “You think he’s not measuring up. You want to know if there’s a reason he’s stupid. Well, I can understand that. I’ll even take your advice. But I want to make one thing clear. I don’t want him being called special or slow, you understand me? I don’t ever want to hear of somebody’s saying that. And I don’t want any of the other kids to know about this.”

The teacher colored.
Jesus
, but he hated teachers. They always knew more than you did, and they never admitted it to your face. “You might have been singled out, Mr. Coolbaugh, but Loose won’t be. There are two other boys in his class right now who are being evaluated, too.”

“Who?” Eddie said.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Coolbaugh, but that’s confidential, just the way Loose’s evaluation will be kept confidential.”

“I’ll bet one of them is that Crowley kid.” Eddie turned to Petie. “He’s the one who was still crapping in his pants—”

“Eddie,” Petie warned.

“Come on, Petie, he’s a slow kid—Dooley Burden used to think he was retarded, remember that? Loose is nothing like that kid.”

Mrs. Hendrik looked desperately at Petie.

“It’s okay,” Petie told her. “He’s sensitive about this stuff. He had a tough time. Voc Ed, three years of Algebra I, that kind of thing.”

“Shut up, Petie.”

“So what now?” Petie asked the teacher.

“Well, with your permission I’ll set up some evaluative testing for Loose in the next couple of weeks. When we’ve got the results, I’ll contact you so we can go over them.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie said.

“Do what you need to do,” said Petie.

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Coolbaugh. I’m so glad. You have no idea how important this may turn out to be.”

Petie got out of her tiny chair and pushed it under the tiny desk. Eddie got up and left his chair as it was. Mrs. Hendrik rose, too, and held out her hand.

“Thank you, Mrs. Coolbaugh.”

Petie pressed the teacher’s wrist lightly. “It’s okay.”

“And you. Mr. Coolbaugh.” Eddie ignored the hand outstretched in his direction and turned for the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, and was gone.

Y
OU’RE
SUCH
a piece of shit, Eddie,” Petie said when she caught up with him in the parking lot. “You really are. That poor girl was scared to death of you and all she was trying to do was make sure Loose doesn’t have to go through what you did. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“My kid’s not stupid.”

“Did anyone say that? I didn’t hear
anyone
say that.”

“Not yet,” Eddie said. “But they will.”

“You listen to me,” Petie hissed. “You know who his grandfather was. You know what I’ve been thinking every night at two in the morning for weeks, when you’re snoring away? I’ve been worrying about whether that child’s becoming a pervert just like Old Man.
That’s
what I’ve been thinking. And hey, guess what? He’s not a pervert. At least he’s not a pervert yet. He isn’t stupid either. Get your fucking priorities straight, Eddie.”

“My kid isn’t a pervert.”

“No, he isn’t a pervert. But he
could
have been a pervert.”

Eddie leaned on the door of his Pepsi delivery truck. “Jesus, Petie. Did you really think that?”

“Yes. So I’m thinking this other is good news. Hell, you don’t get put in prison for failing to learn.”

“Yeah, well, okay, so I might have been a little hard on her.”

“Hard on her? Shit, wild Indians with bows and arrows would have been less intimidating.”

Eddie wasn’t listening. “You know what’s funny? If one of the boys is going to have problems, I figure it should be Ryan.”

“Why? He’s always been a good student.”

“Why? Because he’s a goddamn wimp, that’s why. I mean, what other kid do you know who’s afraid of goats?” Ryan had an inexplicable fear of a large goat that lived a couple of blocks down the street from them. He said its pupils went the wrong way. It was, admittedly, a thin reason.

“He’s a bright boy,” Petie said. “He just has his ways.”

“Yeah, well, some damned weird ways. Like what was that thing with always having to wear the same hooded sweatshirt? Remember that? The damned thing nearly fell apart before he’d give it up. What the hell was that? All I’m saying is that I would’ve been less surprised if it had been Ryan having trouble.”

“He’s a good boy, Eddie.”

“Yeah, well. Nan Goody Two-Shoes there will figure out what’s going on with Loose and we’ll deal with it. I’m not going to let them put him in Voc Ed, though, I’ll tell you that right now.” Eddie had been tracked into Voc Ed for years. They called it Talent then—how cruel was that?

“They don’t do Voc Ed like they used to anymore, anyway. Everybody’s in the same class, and they just give special attention to the kids who need it. It’s different now.”

“It fucking better be.”

And that was that. Eddie buckled himself in, revved up his truck and was out of the parking lot before Petie had even gotten her key into the ignition. What Eddie minded was that Ryan was not a manly boy, but whose fault was that? Deep down, Eddie had never been able to stand being around him. A difficult baby had grown into a difficult child who cried too easily, trembled uncontrollably when Eddie rabbit-punched him for fun, missed Petie the few nights he’d consented to spend away from home. The only other adult he trusted was Rose, and Eddie knew it. There were some things you couldn’t change.

Petie pulled out onto the highway, headed for Souperior’s. First school and now this. Against her better judgment she had some of her
drawings and watercolors in the backseat that she was going to show to Gordon. Rose promised to meet her there, in case she lost her nerve.

You think you’re something special, girlie? You think you’re some kind of artist?
Old Man used to jeer at her.
If you think I’m going to buy you paper or pencils, you’re wrong. If you want to doodle, the school can damn well give you supplies. I pay for them with my tax money, don’t I? Ask the school. Ask them!

All Petie’s paintings and drawings were tiny, most of them smaller than a postcard, the only size that even in the damp trailer was guaranteed to dry before Old Man came back and tore them up. Rose had made Petie a special decoupaged cigar box where she could store her pictures until the next morning, when she’d bring them to Rose’s house.

Rose was already waiting at a table by the streaming windows when Petie arrived. Petie could hear the blood in her veins.

“So?” Rose said.

“Good news. He probably has a learning disability.”

“So it didn’t have anything to do with that little boy?”

“No—she didn’t even know what I was talking about.”

“Thank God,” said Rose.

“Thank God.”

“So what did Eddie think?”

“He’s pissed. He thinks it should have been Ryan.”

“No.”

Petie shrugged. “So where’s Gordon?”

“Not here; yet. You want a cup of coffee?”

“Not as much as I want a cigarette. I’ll be outside if he shows up.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Don’t cross me,” Petie said darkly.

Rose held up her hands in mock surrender and tossed Petie a disposable lighter and a pack of Merits she had put in her purse this morning, figuring one of them might need one. Petie left the decoupaged box on the banquette seat. There were so many mornings when Petie had shown up with that little box tucked under one arm. Rose always looked
through it while Petie was showering, and what she often found were pictures of the most unlikely things: a composition of beer bottles in the rain, a ball of tinfoil on a slice of American cheese, five buttons and a cigarette pack. No people; there were never any people.

Now, waiting for Gordon, Rose peeked again into the same little box and found it filled this time with tiny sketches and watercolors of sun-soaked fruits and vegetables, feather bouquets, loaves of bread, wheels of cheese. Tiny things, still; splendor in miniature, thimbles of magnificence.

Petie and Gordon came to Rose’s table at the same time. Petie from the kitchen, Gordon through the street entrance. Both wore beaded caps of rain. Gordon looked good, stronger than he’d looked for several months. He wore an air of quiet dread, presumably born of worry about the degree of Petie’s incompetence and his ability to deal with it kindly.

Petie pushed the box across the table towards Gordon without a word and turned away to look over Hubbard Bay. Gordon lifted the lid and for an eternity, without a word, reviewed the whole stack once, turned it over and examined it again. Petie never looked at him and Rose never looked away, resisting the urge to gnaw a nail only through the purest self-control. Finally he tapped the pictures into order, looked at Rose and frowned, clearing his throat several times.

Petie’s hand tightened just perceptibly around her coffee mug. Her focus on the streaming windowpane never wavered. A wisp of hair, silhouetted against the window, pulsed with a vein at her temple. “It’s okay,” she said. “Rose wanted me to do it. I did it.”

“Oh my God, imagine my relief!” Gordon burst out, failing to keep up the sham of his disappointment any longer. He grinned crazily at Rose, who colored with pleasure from her bosom to her hairline. “Oh, my dear, these are wonderful,
wonderful
. I’ll need to send one or two down to L.A. so Paul can see the quality, but I’ll recommend Petie absolutely and without reservation. I think this work, her style, is just exactly right. Petie, if they ask you to come up with new pictures, say, a bunch of carrots, a steaming soup bowl, that sort of thing, how would you feel?”

“Fine,” Petie said to the windowpane. Gordon looked at Rose. What was up?

“Petie?” Rose said.

Petie rose, pressing her hands flat on the tabletop. When she took them away again, there was blood on the tablecloth. She had put her fingernails through her palms.

She walked out of Souperior’s without another word.

In the center of the table the pictures remained, mute and deafening.

“Will she come back?” Gordon asked, disconcerted.

“Oh yes,” said Rose, her eyes brilliant. “Oh yes.”

W
HEN
R
OSE
got home, only Jim Christie was there, watching the news on television. When he was out on the boats, he read, read all kinds of things like studies in quantum physics and volumes of poetry from the 1920s, and works by Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck. He never discussed these books with anyone or read the same thing twice. But when he was home, he was a news fanatic, avid to catch up on the things he’d missed while he was away. Rose found him absorbed in a TV clip about Halston’s newest line, introduced that day on the irrelevant runways of Paris.

Rose told him about Petie and the pictures. “I wish you could have been there,” she said. “You could have cut the air it was so thick. And then he loved them. He
loved
them!”

“Good.”

Rose shook her head. “You know, all these years and I
still
fall for her act sometimes, that she doesn’t care a bit. She cares. She cares so
much
.”

Rose kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up under her skirt, snuggling against Christie. He snaked a hand underneath to cup her calf. “My mother gave her gifts every Christmas—little things, you know, because we didn’t have any money, either. Usually it was something she sewed or knitted, a dress or a sweater, maybe. And Petie would have to
keep it at our house because one time Old Man saw a new pair of jeans Petie had saved up for months to buy, and he cut them, took a scissors and cut them right up the front of the leg, so even if she fixed them it would always show. He was drunk, of course, but that was Old Man,
Jesus
he was mean. Anyway, so my mother let her keep things in my closet. And Petie always treated those Christmas gifts like they were made of solid gold. Every year she would give my mother one of her little pictures because she couldn’t afford to buy us anything, but my mom never put them up on the walls.”

“Sounds like your mother treated her good, though,” he said.

“Oh, yes and no. She never invited Petie to go with us when we went anywhere, like to visit relatives in the Valley. Petie could act pretty rough, and I think Mother was afraid Petie would embarrass her. Petie knew it, too. She’d never talk about it with me, but she knew all right. No, my mother was a good Christian woman who considered Petie a poor lost lamb who’d strayed from the Lord’s protecting gaze. The one thing she did invite Petie to was church, but she never would go with us. She used to say people like her and Old Man didn’t belong in a church, not even on a visiting basis. She told me she figured that if either of them actually set foot over the threshold, lightning and hellfire would come in straight through the roof.” Rose chuckled, and then said quietly, “God. Petie.”

“Lucky thing she’s got you.”

“Ummh.” Under her skirt, Christie’s hand moved from calf to thigh, the rough skin of his fingers brushing the softness of hers.

“Where’s Carissa?” Rose said.

“Neighbors. She’s spending the night.”

“Ah,” said Rose.

“Uh-huh,” said Christie.

And then there was no more talking, not for a long time. Rose loved all of Christie, loved the taste and smell and feel of him, loved his few words and intellectual appetite and sexual generosity. He touched her in exactly the ways she needed to be touched. Sometimes it seemed to her
that their entire relationship was as simple as that. She touched his sleeping hand and thought that Pogo, the only husband she would probably ever have, had had neither time nor generosity. He’d thrust himself into her before she was ready and be done before she was ready, and then he’d get dressed and go out. He’d given her Carissa, though, and for that she would always be grateful.