Mean Season (13 page)

The Guys Again

R
ound about the time Sandy and I were talking to Max, Lionel was calling my house. Me not being there, he talked to Joshua, and by the time I was back from the Buccaneer, the two of them had hatched a plan for another Sunday night movie at our house, and there was nothing I could do about it. Scooter had family obligations, but otherwise, it was going to be the same audience as for
Die Hard,
plus Max's two cousins from Roanoke were invited, since they'd still be in town.

God, I was feeling low all day that Sunday. I had no energy for anything, especially the thought of company. I didn't even have energy for grocery shopping, and when Momma offered to go with Beau Ray, I took her up on it so fast, she asked if I was sick.

I wasn't sick, I was sapped. Maybe it was the summertime heat kicking in, or maybe it was Momma and the way she'd
started talking about her and Judge Weintraub as a “we.” I swear, I didn't begrudge my mother one minute of happiness, but it still made me aware that I was nowhere near to being a “we.”

Or maybe it was Sandy's “we.” Since she hadn't told anyone but me about Alice, I was hearing an awful lot on the subject. After Max left the Buck with his cousins, I kept on hearing about her. How great she was, how funny she was, how stylish she was, how everything she was. Sure I wanted to be happy for Sandy, and I
was
happy for Sandy, but I had others moods mixed in, too.

I didn't want to be part of a “we” just so I could use the pronoun more. I could have gone back to Lionel—I was pretty sure of that—if my only goal had been to use the word. But the more I thought about Lionel and me, the more it felt like being in a pool and treading water, refreshing for a spell, but tiresome after a time, and you're always in the same place.

Even Joshua, who didn't seem apt at noticing anything, asked what was up. He was just out of the shower, and I was headed into my room to get ready before everyone showed up.

“What's wrong with you?” Joshua asked.

I told him nothing, I mean, that nothing was wrong.

“You drink too much last night? Are you hungover?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, someone's cranky today.” He was standing in the doorway of Vince's bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Just a towel and the gray ankle sensor, still beaded with water. He'd gotten quite tan in the previous weeks and was keeping in shape with Tommy's old weight set. His chest seemed like something from a sculpture or a perfume ad. Part of me wanted to reach out and touch it, to see what it felt like, although I'd touched plenty of chests before then. Funny, but his chest being so perfect made it hard to look
at it. To see something like that, so close, and to know that it might as well be a mirage, not for you and not ever to be yours—that's no pleasure. Maybe that was my problem with Max.

I don't think Joshua was standing there half-naked because he considered himself a symbol of all I couldn't have. Not right then, at least. He was just standing there. He was a guy out of the shower, after all. The way they tell you, when you've got an interview or a speech to give, to think of everyone in their underwear. He was like that. Real. Human.

“I don't feel like having company, is all,” I managed to say.

He shrugged. “You don't have to watch.”

For a moment, I thought maybe I
had
been staring, that he'd noticed I was having a hard time looking away from him. But he went into his room, and I realized that he must have meant the movie. I didn't have to watch the movie.

In my room, behind the door, I pulled off my shirt and my shorts and stood in front of my closet in my underwear. It felt good in the summertime heat to be out of the day's sweaty clothes, but there was nothing hanging up or folded that struck me as the right thing to change into. I didn't know what I wanted to wear, because what I wore seemed more than ever like an extension of who or where I wanted to be. If I didn't have the answers to those questions, how could I ever expect to find an outfit to match? I had looked through some of the magazines Alice had brought—the same ones where I'd found my new haircut—and there were so many ideas in there. But none of my clothes looked like the magazine clothes. Everything in my closet seemed too bright and too sunny and too obvious.

I'd read in one of the magazines where a designer said, “when in doubt, wear black.” And I'd always heard that people in New York dressed in black all the time. I figured why not—at least my clothing would match my mood. So I wore
a plain black T-shirt and black pants and pulled my hair back into a ponytail.

But come to find out the “wear black” rule doesn't work for Pinecob, West Virginia. I should have known that “when in doubt, wear boots,” or maybe “wear jeans,” is the rule there, and I knew I'd broken it when I opened the door for Lionel and Paulie, and Lionel said, “Whoa, where's the funeral?” and Paulie asked if I'd gone “goth,” as he handed me a six-pack. Still I figured, what did they know, and I was halfway to forgetting their comments when Max showed up with Laura and Lisa, his cousins.

Laura and Lisa were both dressed in cute little summery skirts and matching tops, and their blond hair was all bouncy and shiny, as if they'd taken turns blow-drying each other. One had blue eyeshadow and one had lavender, but besides that, they looked an awful lot alike. They were sunny and nice and totally killed whatever good spirits I had left in me.

“Hey, Leanne,” Max said. “You feeling okay?”

“Why?” I asked him.

“Your mom did the shopping today, and I don't know, you look a little pale.”

“I'm fine,” I told him. “I'll get Joshua and we can start.” I noticed Laura elbow Lisa, who giggled a little. I hoped they wouldn't fawn over Joshua. I thought that might make me physically ill.

“He's upstairs then?” Max asked.

“I think so.”

“Across the hall,” Max said.

“Yeah, why?”

But Max just shrugged.

“Who wants a beer?” Lionel asked.

I raised my hand, but it seemed that he couldn't see past Max's cousin Lisa. Blue eyeshadow.

Joshua came bounding down the stairs. “I miss anything?”
he asked. Then he looked at me and did a doubletake. “Don't you look Left Bank tonight,” he said.

“What's that?” Scooter asked.

“Leanne's gone chic on us,” Joshua said.

Scooter looked over at me. “Since when's a black T-shirt chic?” he asked.

Max interrupted to introduce Joshua to the Roanoke cousins, and Joshua did his charming act and asked all about Virginia and talked about
Musket Fire
and the character of Josiah Whitcomb and how the story was a mix of
Taming of the Shrew
and
Gone with the Wind,
which I'd heard about a hundred times by then. I felt about as chic as our old rug.

I hated being with myself in that sort of mood, much less a crowd of other people living it up. So I excused myself and headed back to Beau Ray's room. The room had been his private domain nearly twelve years by then (he'd laid claim to it as soon as Tommy moved out). But he'd promised, when he first took it over, that as long as his door was open, I was allowed inside. That open-door policy had remained a constant, except during a couple of knockdown drag-outs, and since Beau Ray's room was as far off as you could get from the din of the house and still be inside, I'd sought shelter in there a number of times. There and in his bathroom across the hall.

“Are you lonely?” It was Beau Ray. He sat on his bed, smiling at me. “Are you sad, Leanne?”

“No,” I told him. There was so much I never explained to Beau Ray, mostly because he tended to lose his ability to concentrate about thirty seconds into a conversation. Maybe because I felt that, on a lot of levels, his challenges loomed larger than anything I ever faced, even if he didn't realize it. It was habit, by then, to give him the smaller version of everything. The abridged edition. “I'm a little tired,” I told him.

“You're wearing a lot of the same color,” he said.

I nodded. “Is that bad?” I asked him.

“It's not bad,” he said. “I wear all one color some days.”

I wasn't sure that was the argument I wanted to hear.

“It's crowded in our house tonight,” he said. “More girls.”

“That's true.”

“I'm going to bring my pillow to lie on.”

“That's more comfortable than the floor,” I told him.

He laughed. “You can't lie on the floor,” Beau Ray said.

“Well, you can—” I started to say.

“For a whole movie?” he asked.

I told him that he was probably right. “You're going to like this movie.”

“You're going to like it.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I might go out instead.”

Beau Ray frowned. “Go where?”

“Maybe just to get some milk. Just out. You stay and watch the movie. It's a good movie. James Bond. And Joshua will be here.”

“Joshua lives here,” Beau Ray said.

“For a little while longer at least,” I agreed.

“Be back soon,” he said, and it sounded like a decision.

“Leanne? Beau Ray?” It was Lionel from the living room.

Even if I wasn't going to watch, I'd have to walk by them to get out of the house. Whether I left out the front door or the back, I'd have to pass through the living room, and the guys and the matching blondes. I wished I could just stay in Beau Ray's room, but I got the impression that nowhere in the house would let me breathe the way I wanted, not that night. I'd be able to hear the movie from every room.

“Coming!” I called out. I handed Beau Ray his pillow and we left his room.

They were waiting for us, Joshua in Dad's old easy chair, and the girls on the long couch, with Max between them. Lionel and Paulie sat on the short couch, and looked up when we came in.

“You guys ready?” Lionel asked.

“Leanne has to go get milk,” Beau Ray said.

“Now?” It was Max. “Why?”

“Why don't you start the movie?” I said. “Really. I forgot something. Earlier. I thought I'd go out for it now.”

“Now?” Max asked again.

“You going to a rave?” Paulie asked.

Lionel swatted him. “You don't even know what a rave is,” he said.

“I've never been to a rave,” Lisa said. “Are they fun?”

“Jesus, let her go if she wants to go,” Joshua said.

“I won't be long,” I said.

Lionel shrugged and started the film. Beau Ray set his pillow against the side of the long couch and sat down. I grabbed my keys and walked out.

There are some decisions that, when you're making them, you're pretty sure you could go either way. If anyone had piped up to say that they wanted me to stay, I'd probably have stayed. And since no one did, I left. But once I was outside, I knew that leaving was what I'd wanted. The way you feel your deepest desire when the coin is in the air. Even though you've already called heads, and even though you've said you couldn't care less, suddenly, the coin is flipping around and you find yourself hoping for tails.

I drove into the center of Pinecob first, trying to think what to buy, so as to have had a good excuse for leaving in the first place. I thought about getting Beau Ray some ice cream. A prescription would have worked, except it was Sunday night and the pharmacy was closed. Indeed, a lot of Pinecob was closed up and turned off, so I headed toward the Potomac and drove alongside that slow river a while, until I crossed a big bridge announcing the borderline of Virginia. I'd driven there a couple of times in the week following Joshua's arrest, but I wasn't too familiar with the state, and past Harper's Ferry, it was all foreign to me. But I kept on
driving and listening to the radio, and singing along, loud as can be because it was dark and who was going to see me crooning like a fool? I kept going, sort of east some of the time, sort of south if I felt the urge. I passed schools and shopping malls and truck stops and fields, most of them dark. I passed a church all lit up, the parking lot overflowing onto the shoulder of the road. Finally, I pulled over at a strip mall to stretch my legs. I looked around. The stores there were the same as we had in Charles Town, but the land around was a lot flatter.

I looked at the gas gauge—I still had half a tank, more than enough to get me farther away, or if I turned around then, to get me home. I sat on the hood of the car, the engine warm and clicking beneath me, and looked into the dark ahead. I wondered whether, on the night he left, Vince's mood had been the same as mine right then. I didn't know if his leaving had been a spontaneous decision, if maybe he had been planning on going out for a soda or a drive, but with each mile told himself, just one mile more, until Pinecob was long gone behind him. That's how I kept going whenever I went jogging. Just one step more. Just one tree more. Just one block more.

Or maybe he knew, from the moment he left, that he wasn't coming back. I wondered if he'd floored the accelerator on the way out of town. Whether he'd said goodbye to anyone. Why hadn't he said goodbye to anyone?

I found myself remembering an autumn day, back when I was six and Vince was eight. Vince's class had gone on a field trip to Cedar Creek Battlefield Park. Momma had signed on as a parent-chaperone and had dragged me along for educational purposes, she said. After the tour was over, when the rest of the kids were eating their lunches, Vince found a stick and started playing like it was a sword, jabbing and swinging. I remember thinking that it was the best stick ever and that I wanted to play with it, too. I was reaching for it
just as Vince wheeled around, and the stick poked me hard in the cheek. I started crying and Momma yelled at Vince something fierce and took the best stick ever and broke it in half.