It Burns a Lovely Light (19 page)

"Does William seem all right to you?" asked Farley, folding a towel.

"Depends on your definition of all right." Veda Marie looked over at the chalkboard. "If drawing a set of human lungs for
us to look at while we eat is all right, I'd say he's fine."

Claire dumped another load of clean laundry on the table. "I've noticed it too, Farley. He's been moody lately. Maybe it's
puberty."

Veda Marie chuckled. "Our boy might look young, lovey, but he's twenty."

"Still," said Farley. "He's usually pretty open with me, but not this time. Maybe it
is
a man thing. I'm going to
ask Joe to have a talk with him; man-to-man."

Joe tucked William in and sat on the edge of his bed.

"Why don't you start coming to practice with me, Pal? I
sure could use some help."

William tucked his arms under his head and stared at the ceiling. "You already have an assistant coach."

"Unfortunately, he thinks he's too good to hand out
towels."

"And you
drive
to practice."

"You know, pal, one of these days you're going to have to get used to riding in a car. But I don't mind walking. The rink is just a
few blocks over from Freeman's."

William was quiet for a moment.

"I'm tired of not being normal," he said. "I want to be like everybody else."

Joe rubbed his chin. "I know what you mean. I'd love to
be like everybody else."

"You?"

"Sure. On some level we're all trying to fit in." Joe tapped William on the chest. "Let me tell you something, pal; you are
so much better than everybody else."

William bit the insides of his gums to keep from smiling. "You mean it?"

"I swear on those nice boys from Pittsburgh."

"Would I get to wear a Frosty Devils jersey with PAL on the back?"

"Of course. You'd be an official member of the team."

He clicked his tongue. "I guess, if the team needs me,
I should probably do it."

Veda Marie poured coffee while Claire pulled out sections of the Sunday newspaper.

"I'm surprised Mr. Winston isn't up yet," said
Claire.

"He probably found a hair out of place."

For some reason it aggravated Veda Marie that the man showed up completely groomed and fresh smelling first thing in the morning.

"You're just jealous that you have fresh-as-a-daisy-at-breakfast competition," teased Claire.

"I'm not listening to you. It's too early in the morning for crazy-talk."

"Good morning, lovely ladies," said Mr. Winston,
pulling up a chair.

Feeling guilty, Veda Marie filled his coffee mug.

Mr. Winston scooped a spoonful of sugar into his coffee and
stirred.

"Tell me, William," he said, "how are you finding life as an assistant coach?"

William smacked his hand on the table. ""The Frosty Devils are the best. The guys are always hitting each other in the arm and
popping each other on the bum with wet towels." His voice began to rise. "And they have so much hair...Peter Gaglio had a full beard when he was sixteen years old!"

"Voices..." said Veda Marie.

William covered his mouth and leaned toward Mr. Winston.

"Peter Gaglio isn't as big as the other guys, but he has the fullest beard and the biggest muscles. He spits all the time and he
skates so fast nobody can catch him. And he knows more curse words than anyone else in the whole wide world!"

"Is that so?"

"Yes that is so." William raised his hand to
high-five Joe as he entered the kitchen. "Joe, my man!"

"This Gaglio sounds like a real winner," said Claire.

"Peter Gaglio chaps my ass," said Joe, pouring himself a bowl of corn flakes.

Veda Marie shot him a look.

"Sorry," he said. "What I mean is that the kid's got more talent than he deserves. He's amazing; he's got ice vision; he can sense the way the puck's going to glide. You either have ice vision or you
don't. Gaglio's got it, big time. He'll go up against men twice his size and
they'll
back down." He tapped his temple with his spoon. "Nothing going on upstairs, though. On top of that, he's lazy and he's got a bad attitude."

"Why would you want someone like that on your team?" asked Claire.

Joe shoveled a spoonful of cereal into his mouth. "The kid can score."

Mr. Winston tapped his stick on the cobblestones as he and William started down Overlook Trail. "What's the word for the day?"

"'Myriad.'"

"Myriad." Mr. Winston scratched his beard.
"Impressive."

"I know, but do you like it as much as piccalilli?"

"That's a tough one. I don't know if I can let go of piccalilli."

William covered his mouth, trying to control his wide smile.

"Myriad," Mr. Winston repeated. "What progress you've made. Miss Kelly will be proud."

After William became too old to be a student at The
Significant Me, Claire hired his former teacher to continue working with him. Miss Kelly was currently encouraging William to explore words outside of his "safe" medical zone.

A pickup truck slowed to a stop.

"Good morning," said the driver. "Can you please tell me where Bridge Manor is?"

Opening the door, Claire found a small bald man wearing a
short sleeve blue shirt. He had a row of what appeared to be patches of hair sewn into his scalp. His neck was indiscernible; his head seemed to rest on his chest.

"Good morning, ma'am. My name is Sherman Lowe," he
said, handing her a business card.

Sherman Lowe

Lowe & Son Restoration

Quality Home Repair and Maintenance

We offer payment plans!

"My company, Lowe & Son Restoration, is doing some
work in the area. I happened to notice that your roof is in need of repair."

Claire snorted. "Don't remind me."

Normally she would have shut the door by now, but she felt a
little sorry for this man with his painfully polka-dotted scalp.

"Winter will be here before we know it." He examined the roof. "A sturdy nor'easter will blow that baby right
off."

"I'm afraid you've wasted a trip, Mr. Lowe. Money's a little tight right now."

He tapped the bottom line on the card, in case she had missed it the first time:

We offer payment plans!

He leaned in. "To be honest, I think you'll find that our payment plans are particularly attractive."

Claire took another look at the card. "How attractive?"

Eileen bounced her bike down Overlook Trail's bumpy cobblestones. On the steepest part, she let go of the handlebars and made herself count to ten before gripping them again. Her heart pounded with the
terrified glee of it all. She pulled her baseball hat down low over her eyes, enjoying the surge of power that started in her crotch and ran up and down her body. There was only the sound of the rattle of her tires on the narrow, winding
road.

She reached the bottom and peddled like crazy across Grady Square. As she sped past St. Xavier's her thoughts turned to school. Mainly because, for the first time in her life, she didn't hate it. Sure, the boys
still acted nice one day and mean the next, and the girls were still clique-bitches. Her sixth grade teacher was already making noises about a parent-teacher conference, where she would inevitably ask if Eileen had 'been tested' - thank God her dad wasn't big on that. Still, she didn't mind school
anymore because, over the summer, something significant had occurred. Eileen Kane had become a Bad Ass.

She soared along the smooth pavement past Freeman's, past the playground and the junior high, until she saw the small wooden sign for
Hogg's Pond. She turned her bike onto the dirt road and peddled to the end, then screeched to a stop and looked back to admire her skid marks.

Crouching down, she slipped through two broken boards in the
fence and walked toward the pond. The closer she got, the louder the chirping and whirring of frogs and insects sounded - until it was all just one giant, pulsing screeching noise. The ground was wet and warm water squished into her
sneakers.

She sat on a log and unwound a pack of Benson & Hedges and a mangled book of matches from the elastic of her underwear. She lit the least bent cigarette and coughed as the stale smoke found its way to her lungs.
Plucking a hair from her head, she watched it curl as she touched it to the cigarette's glowing tip. She burned a few more hairs and a few holes in her shirt before pulling Billie's 'best realtor in all the land' necklace out of her pocket.

"Bite me, Billie!" she yelled, and chucked the necklace as far as she could into the middle of the pond.

Claire hired Lowe & Son to repair the roofs on Bridge Manor and the carriage house. The payment plan was so reasonable she decided to
go ahead and replace the old dual-basin kitchen sink with a large, single-basin sink. And on a whim - although she herself would not be caught dead using it - she had an outdoor shower installed, complete with insulated pipes.

To enclose the shower, Farley and Veda Marie found three old wooden doors in the cellar. They propped the doors against the fence at the bottom of the property, then recruited Joe and September to help sand and
paint.

Farley looked up from her sanding. The weather was mild for November. She was dressed in a blue jeans and a short-sleeved tee shirt with no bra.

"Hey, Claire!" she yelled, pointing to the doors.
"Look what we found!"

"Tell her to get down here and grab a piece of sandpaper," said Veda Marie, wiping her forehead.

Claire walked down the lawn and admired the doors.

"I'll help in a second," she said. "I need to talk to Resa first."

"Why do I have a feeling this is about Eileen?" said Resa, wobbling toward the group with a bucketful of soapy water.

Eileen had developed a nasty habit of lifting things that didn't belong to her: William's hockey puck, a perfume bottle of Veda Marie's, a rawhide hair tie of September's. Now, Claire had seen her with an awfully familiar scarf tied around her waist.

"It's a phase," said September. "When I was little I used to take trinkets from people I loved and admired so much, I wanted a piece of them. I even had a name for it: 'steal longing.'"

"I can't imagine you ever stealing anything," said Farley.

"I did, but only for a little while. I started to worry about repercussions from the universe. I was afraid I'd come back as an ant or
a flea in my next life."

Veda Marie whispered in Farley's ear. "Apparently the universe missed the pot plant thriving under a heat lamp in her closet."

"The child needs help," said Claire.

"I've already talked to Billie," said Resa. "Although she didn't seem too concerned."

Veda Marie lit a cigarette. "Billie is probably the cause of Eileen's new hobby. I say we continue to overwhelm the child with
love, the rest will take care of itself."

"Why, Veda Marie Tendersheets," said Farley, giving her a playful nudge. "Underneath that steel smokescreen, you're a flower child."

"That's me." She picked a piece of tobacco off her lip and flicked it. "Mia Farrow in a panty girdle."

"I don't get it; now they're calling for snow,"
said Farley as she unbuttoned her coat. "What happened to fall?"

Henry poured a bag of shelled walnuts into a mixing bowl. "We were too busy to notice. Dion called; she'll be a few minutes late."

"Hopefully because she's studying. She's failing some of her classes."

"I don't think Mr. Wonderful likes her focusing on anything but his Robert Redfordness."

"What a loser." Farley picked a shell out of the
bowl. "I can't believe he lied his way out of his wallet-forgetting habit."

"In retrospect, we should have anticipated that one."

Farley chuckled "In retrospect."

"Are you making fun of me?" he asked.

"I'm teasing you." Her smile was genuine. "I love the way you talk, Henry."

Dion danced into the kitchen, patting her shiny new platinum-colored hair. "What do you think?"

"Oh!" Henry put his hands on his head.

"Your hair...you..." stammered Farley.

"You look magnificent!" cried Colette. She kissed Dion once on each cheek. "
Très chic
!"

"Really?" Dion's face was beaming. "I wanted something special. Duncan invited me to his family's cabin. We're leaving after
work tonight."

After a particularly hectic night Dion took a birdbath in the ladies room and changed her clothes. She stepped into the empty dining room
in a tea-length red dress, belted with two thin orange patent leather belts. Her hair was parted on the side, bangs pulled back with a small orange clip in the shape of a daisy.

"What a gorgeous dress," said Farley.

"It better be." Dion flounced the skirt playfully. "I had to dip pretty far into next semester's tuition to pay for it."

"Hey, I thought you left an hour ago," said Henry,
untying his apron and tossing it into the laundry bin. "Is everything all right?"

"Not exactly," said Farley. "It's Duncan."

"What did Prince Charming do this time?"

"He was late picking up Dion for their special getaway."

"How late?"

"He never showed up."

"Henry's warming up the car," said Farley, handing Dion some tissues. "Look, I know you don't want to hear this, but maybe it's best that this happened. You know, before you got any more...involved."

"Thanks a lot," mumbled Dion. "That makes me feel so much better."

"I'm sorry, but it's the truth."

"Like you know so much about getting
involved
."

Farley threw her arms up. "Look at yourself, Dion. You're miserable. You fried your hair. You're failing your classes and you blew God knows how much money on that dress. It's three-thirty in the morning and you've been waiting around for this guy for hours. And it's not the first time
he's stood you up..."