Mean Season (2 page)

But I wasn't going to end up in pornos. Being president of Joshua Reed's fan club gave me something to look forward to, was all. I
liked
that it was different. Still, life on Prospect Street got easier once I learned to manage most of my fan club chores from the basement in a couple hours on Saturday afternoons. That's when Beau Ray went to his “Move Your Body, Move Your Mind” class at the Y and Mom went to her ages-old quilting bee, so I had a little quiet time. To tell the truth, by two years in, the fan club had become almost as routine as everything else.

Of course, it's old news by now that Joshua Reed's career really took off after he played Nate, the hero in
Villains Can't Be Choosers.
It's easy to see why. The costume people dressed him all in white and he grew his hair out, and he looked like Jesus come to life. Only sexy.

The fan club membership had been growing since I took the job, but it really jumped—it tripled in size—after that movie came out, and again when
Villains
hit video. Judy had to send a whole new batch of membership cards and glossies. By then, she wasn't working for all the
General Hospital
staff—she only had a few clients, Joshua being one of them. By then, Joshua had made it into
People
a few times. I cut out the pictures and photocopied them for the newsletter.

I know people wondered about it—what my real deal with Joshua was. Mostly, I let them guess, although it was obvious to me that I wasn't flying off to Los Angeles for weekends, and no limos were ever parked along Prospect Street. Fact is, I knew a lot about Joshua, and I could answer almost all of the questions that club members would send in. (For example, Judy called him J.P. because his real name was Joshua Polichuk. He started going by Joshua Reed when he moved to L.A.) But I never talked to him on the phone or anything. Once, when I was talking to Judy, she said that Joshua said to say hi, but I didn't hear him say it, so I don't know whether he was even in the room with her. He did write—a couple of times. Not really letters, but he would scrawl a note at the end of something Judy was sending off. He had messy, uneven handwriting, but his signature was polished. Probably from signing all those photographs. The first time, he wrote:
Leanne, Judy tells me you're my biggest fan. You're the best! xoxo, Joshua Reed.

The second time, he wrote:
Leanne, you're the best for keeping all this together!

The third time, it was:
Leanne, Be sure to tell all your friends about
Villains,
and also about
Celebrity Jeopardy! That was
right before
Villains Can't Be Choosers
came out, and Judy was keeping him busy with all sorts of special events and appearances, mostly in California, but also in New York.

Sure, it would have been nice if he'd written more or even called on the phone once or twice. That way I might have known him in a personal way, different from the facts and stories that were out there for everyone. But it's impossible to know where a thread starts when you're looking back on things. Maybe if I
had
known Joshua better, I would have quit the fan club long before I did, and Judy probably figured that. Still, it was fun seeing my name in his handwriting, and he spelled it right, too. A lot of people spell it Leeanne, or Leann, or some other way. But Joshua always spelled it right.

I didn't stick with the fan club because I thought that we were meant for each other, Joshua and me. I'm not going to say that a seventeen-year-old girl doesn't imagine things, and I'll admit that I imagined plenty in my early days with the club. But that was before Beau Ray suffered the first of his bad seizures and before Momma went through the months she'd come to call her “unraveleds.” I referred to those months as her mean seasons, since it seemed like she was pissed at everything and everyone in the world. Of course, folks in such a state never realize how ornery and off-putting they're being, so when you find yourself in the midst of someone's mean season, the best you can hope for is to stay out of their line of fire. Back in Momma's worst times, I'd call Tommy or Susan for help, but neither ever offered to head home for even a week to make dinner and check which bills were least overdue. (That was around the same time that the idea of me going off to a full-time college stopped being talked about like it was a good thing, something that might really happen.)

But whenever I thought maybe I ought to give up the club and focus on getting my own life in order, I'd feel a heavi
ness, almost like family, like I'd be letting Judy down. Judy, who always said “thank you” to me. Judy, who asked “would you please.” Judy, who sent cards on my birthday and told me when she would be unavailable (like during her honeymoon) and called whenever she was going to send a new set of photos or an updated credits sheet or a rewritten biography—so I'd know it was coming. Part of me wanted to be like her. Even more of me wanted to
be
her, out there in California, seeing Joshua close up and making dinner for myself, just myself.

At the beginning of my seventh year with the club, membership reached 10,000. That's paying fans, and dues by then were fifteen dollars a year. A year earlier, when it hit 5,000, Judy bought me a computer. I think she was exaggerating, but she said that she couldn't have done any of it without me—that my help and organization and the way I always sent her the rumors that people wrote in about had helped Joshua's career immensely. That's why he's only doing movies now. And good ones, big ones.

But like I said, it had long grown routine by the time Judy called one Saturday.

“Leanne?” she said. “Judy Masterson here.” She always told me her last name, although I didn't know any other Judys so she didn't have to. “I've got some wonderful news.”

“What's that?” I asked. Joshua had been dating this Belgian supermodel named Elise, and I thought maybe Judy was going to tell me that they were getting married. But she didn't even mention Elise.

“J.P. just signed to do a Civil War epic called
Musket Fire.
Think
Taming of the Shrew
meets
Gone with the Wind.
He's not the lead—well, he's the romantic lead, but not the historic lead, you know. We're going to be filming back east, in Virginia, for about three months. Starting next month. Isn't that exciting?”

“I guess I should include that in the Summer newsletter.”
I must have been tired when I said that. I wasn't thinking that it's only forty minutes from Pinecob to the Virginia border—and that once you hit Virginia where the mountains ease up, the roads run a lot quicker.

“That would be great, but mostly, I called to say that I wanted to arrange dinner with you and me and Joshua. You've been working on the fan club for so long, and I swear, J.P.'s club runs so much more smoothly than any of my other clients'—I thought it would be nice…”

“Oh—of course,” I said. “That would be great. I wasn't thinking. When?”

Judy said that she and Joshua would be arriving three weeks from that Sunday, but that the movie studio had already sent casting and location people to set things up. A lot of the filming would be taking place around Winchester and Front Royal, which were only an hour and a half or so from Pinecob. Judy asked whether I wanted to be an extra in the film. She said that Sandy and I could probably both be extras. It might require getting out of work for a few days, she said, but no one was a bigger movie buff than Mr. Bellevue, my boss in the county clerk's office, so I knew he'd let me do it.

I couldn't believe it: Joshua Reed, coming to Pinecob—well, not exactly to Pinecob. He and Judy were going to stay across the Potomac in Virginia for a few days, in part because there are nicer places to stay around there than in Charles Town (and there's no place to stay in Pinecob if you're not at someone's house), and in part because Joshua's character (the fiery lieutenant Josiah Whitcomb) was from that area of Virginia, and Joshua wanted to get a sense of Josiah's history.

I told everyone, of course. How could I not? I told Beau Ray when he got back from “Move Your Body” class. I told Momma when she got back from her bee. I called Sandy and she screamed when I said how we could be extras, and she wondered whether she should try to get extra tan at the
beach when she went. I even went to the Winn-Dixie a day earlier than usual, and when I saw Max, I told him.

Max didn't seem that excited, but he's a guy and Joshua Reed is one of those rare people who's better-looking than Max is. Least, I always thought Max was that good-looking. I spent way too many hours of junior high and high school embarrassing myself by hanging around when he and Beau Ray played football, just so I could see Max wipe the sweat off his brow or lean into his knees to catch his breath. He was Beau Ray's best friend up until the fall, and I think he tried to be afterward, before it became clear how different everything was.

After the fall, you couldn't talk to Beau Ray in the same way—you had to keep to simpler, shorter conversations, and even then, he might not follow. Max would turn to me, since I was often around, to ask if I thought Beau Ray had understood something, or to try to figure out where my brother was taking a thought.

They were talking about airplanes once, I remember. This was a few years after the accident. The three of us were sitting in the backyard when Beau Ray had suddenly looked up and pointed.

“What's that?” Max had asked, as Beau Ray traced his finger across something in the sky.

I looked up. “That airplane? Is that what you're looking at?”

Beau Ray nodded.

“Where do you think they're going?” I asked him.

“Hawaii,” Beau Ray said. He had watched a travel program a few days before with a piece on the various Hawaiian islands and the tourists who were flocking to them.

“I don't think that's headed in the right direction for Hawaii,” Max had said, squinting upward. “I think it looks to be headed east of here. Maybe D.C. or even Europe or something.”

“Hawaii,” Beau Ray said, sounding certain.

Max looked at the plane again, before it disappeared beyond the trees. He gave a little shiver, the kind you'd miss if you weren't watching closely.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“I'm not much on planes,” he said.

“You ever been on one?” I asked him. I hadn't.

“I don't think flying's for me. I like sticking nearer to the ground.”

“Max is taking the bus,” Beau Ray said.

“The bus?” Max asked. “What bus?” He looked at me, lost.

“To Hawaii,” Beau Ray said. “Everyone is going to Hawaii.”

“I don't get it.” Max still looked confused, but I smiled.

“That's one long bus ride,” I said to him. “Be sure to pack a lunch.”

Some folks might have viewed Max Campbell's fear of flying as a weakness, but not me. I liked him just as much for his fear, and counted myself lucky to have been sitting nearby when he'd admitted it. I liked knowing that he wasn't about to go flying off somewhere, that I could count on him being around. Sure, maybe someday he'd disappear down the road in a car, like Vince had, but at least it would take him longer to pull away from Pinecob. Hop on a plane, and you could end up anywhere.

Not that Max was going anywhere. By the time of Judy's phone call, it seemed like he was almost always at the Winn-Dixie (he was an associate manager by then), and I would stop to talk with him whenever I went in. Max had been married for a little while, to a girl named Charlene who had once won the title of Miss Junior West Virginia in a beauty pageant. She'd blown in from the Northern Panhandle, and then blew out again, only a year after their wedding. It shook him something wicked. Judy's phone call about Joshua Reed came maybe a year after Charlene had up and left, when
everyone was still whispering about the torch Max carried, not dating and holding out hope she'd one day come back.

As I said, Max didn't seem too excited about my news, but Martha, the weekend manager was beyond ecstatic. She told everyone. I was surprised she didn't announce it over the loudspeaker. By the end of the weekend, it seemed that everyone in Pinecob knew that I was going to have dinner with Joshua Reed—and maybe even be in the movie!

Dinner in Virginia

“W
hat do you look like, Leanne?” Judy asked me. “It seems so funny to have to ask that, but I'm sure that the mental picture I've got is wrong. You live in L.A. long enough, and your sense of what people look like and what people
are
like gets all screwy.”

So I told her how I'm pretty tall for a girl and on the skinnier side of average and about my hair being halfway between red and brown, and that it was sort of feathering past my shoulders those days. I said I was white, since I realized that she might not know, except that Leanne Gitlin always sounded like a white girl's name to me.

“But if I'm meeting you at the restaurant, won't I recognize Joshua?”

“Oh, of course. I just wanted to try to get a picture of you in my mind. Why did I have you as a bottle blonde, I wonder? I've got to run. I've asked that the driver be at your house at six forty-five. We'll see you at the restaurant.”

And then I was there.

Before then, I was in the car that came to pick me up, which was a lot nicer than any car I'd ever ridden in, even the one my ex, Lionel, bought new from the dealership. And before the car came, I was getting ready, and trying to figure out what to wear. Sandy had left for the beach the day before, so she couldn't help me, but we'd pretty much decided on a sundress that I thought looked like one on the cover of the
Vogue
I saw in the salon where I got my hair cut. Except that my dress had red flowers on a white background, not yellow, and mine was cotton and faded a little and I think the one in the magazine was silk and was surely brand-new.

I looked in the mirror as I waited for my nail polish to dry. I'm pretty enough—people always say I've got good bones—but I'd never been pretty in the way of my sister, Susan. Even after she had three kids, strangers would still tell Susan how beautiful she was—like she might not have known, like they were the first to notice. People had never done that to me, although guys did cross bars to talk. Or at least, they crossed to talk to me and Sandy, but Sandy usually rolled her eyes and turned away, so I was the one who ended up in discussions about rebuilt car engines or Judas Priest vs. Motley Crüe. I'd nod and smile, and by the end of their talking, they'd look at me and say, “you know, you're real pretty.” But by then, I was always unsure if it was because I'd been listening to them yammer on, or because they were tired of talking and wanted to make out, or because maybe, just maybe, I was pretty in the first place. Girls like Susan and Sandy and Max's ex-wife Charlene didn't have that to contend with.

I stared into the bathroom mirror. I dug through my makeup bag and wondered whether blue or green eyeshadow would look better against brown eyes. I put on a kiss of lipstick, then wiped it off.

I wore a lot more makeup in my teens than I was wear
ing at twenty-five. At thirteen or fifteen, makeup felt like magic. Wave the mascara wand, and suddenly I'd look older, more like the senior girls with their long, polished nails and cigarettes. Add lipstick, and I could imagine being the sort of girl that boys in my class whispered about, with her curvy way of walking by that would make even a football star press against the wall to let her pass. Add blush, and I might even start to resemble Brennie Critchett, who was prom queen back when I was a sophomore.

Of course, when I got older, I realized that there were a lot of things mascara couldn't change or fix. Maybe if I'd been the prom queen, I'd have felt differently.

I blinked at my reflection in the mirror of the narrow upstairs bathroom. At the same age, Joshua Reed had a publicist and a fan club and a fan club president. Of course, not everyone can have such a life, or there'd be no one to run the registers at the Winn-Dixie. But I worried a little about the discrepancy between the girl in the mirror and the folks she'd meet in a few hours time.

I put the lipstick back on, and chose green eyeshadow. I thought the night might call for a little magic. It was Joshua Reed, after all. I wondered what Judy would be wearing. I wondered if I would get to call Joshua “J.P.”

 

And then I was there. The car ride took less time than I'd expected. Even though I was twenty-five, I'd only been to Harper's Ferry maybe five times, and then, not to the Virginia side. I'd never even heard of the resort where Judy and Joshua were staying, where we were having dinner. It seemed so far from Pinecob that I expected to be sitting on that leather car seat for hours.

I walked in and gave the host my name and he took me to a table where a woman was sitting.

She stood up and said, “Oh Leanne, Leanne, Leanne. It's a real pleasure.”

Judy was shorter than I was, but she was in heels, so it was hard to tell by just how much. She had short hair, too, in a sort of blond, businesswoman cut. She was younger than I expected, older than me but somewhere in her mid-thirties. And she seemed as nice in person as on the phone. Just as nice and just as busy. Right as I walked up, her cell phone rang. She glanced at it, then turned it off without answering, which I took as a compliment.

“It's nice to meet you,” I said. “Finally.”

“J.P. and Lars will be down soon enough, I'm guessing,” Judy said. I must have looked confused because she said, “Lars is my husband,” and then I remembered the name. “He decided to come with me, last minute. You know he's J.P.'s agent, right? That's how we met.”

“I don't think you ever told me that,” I said.

“It's not much of a story. Lars makes it his business to know everyone. So when he signed Joshua, he had to meet with me. The rest is history,” Judy said. “Listen, Leanne, before the boys show up and people start drinking, I want to thank you for your time and effort, all these years. You really keep the fan club rolling. I want to tell you that. J.P. certainly won't,” she added.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“Oh, I didn't mean it that way,” Judy said. “There are no complaints from his corner. Actually, there are many complaints, but none about you. He's…he's getting famous,” she began, but cut off. “There you two are!”

That's when I turned and saw Joshua Reed in person for the first time. Judy stood, so I stood, too. I felt my heart start pounding a little.

“Joshua, I want you to meet Leanne,” Judy said. “Hi honey,” she whispered to a second man who had walked up and put his arm around her waist.

Joshua Reed leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Leanne. Favorite fan. It is a pleasure,” he said.

I nodded. I managed to say that it was nice to meet him, too. At least, I think I managed to say that. I was just taking it all in. There he was, Joshua Reed, Colin Ashcroft, Nate Cummings, soon to be Josiah Whitcomb. Joshua Reed.

He was shorter than the Joshua Reed in my mind. I mean, after seven years, I knew what his details were, and the official statistics put him at 6'1", but Tommy is 6'2", and I swear that Joshua was more than an inch down. But I didn't focus on that. The rest of the statistics were accurate. The dark brown hair, the dark green eyes. He was growing his hair for the role, Judy had told me, and I could tell. It was curling a bit around the bottoms of his ears. He was beautiful. I'd never seen someone that beautiful up close and in person. I tried not to stare.

Judy introduced me to Lars, her husband, the agent, and he shook my hand hard and enthusiastic and then the four of us sat.

 

“So Leanne, Judy says that you've lived in West Virginia your whole life. Any plans to move?” Lars asked me this, right after our drinks came.

He looked like I always imagined New England professors to look—with little glasses and a beard. And he was one of those people who looked straight at you when you talked, like everything you said was fascinating. I wondered if that made him a good agent.

I told him that I didn't have any plans as yet, that there were nice things about living in Pinecob.

“The town is called Pinecob?” Joshua asked. “What's that all about?”

“J.P.,” Judy said. “Please.”

“I'm just asking,” he said.

“I don't know where the name comes from,” I told him. “Pine trees, maybe. It's just a small town. I imagine there are lots of small towns with funny names out there.”

“Of course there are,” Judy said, and Lars nodded.

“Has your family been around here for long? You know, I'm from Virginia,” Lars said. “Northern. Close to D.C.”

I nodded, to both parts.

“My father's family is from Elkins, down south a bit. That's where Susan, my sister, lives. My mother's family is from close to Charleston, the capital—not Charles Town,” I explained. “Charles Town is just the county seat. But that's probably more than you wanted to know.”

“Not at all,” Lars said, though I thought I saw Joshua roll his eyes. “What business is your father in?” Lars asked.

I heard Judy take a quick breath. She knew more about me than either of the men, and I imagine she was worried that I was going to feel uncomfortable, telling practical strangers about my life. But I didn't mind. I couldn't remember anyone asking before. That's the thing about a small town—everyone already knows your story. It's kind of nice to say it out loud every once in a while.

“My dad died when I was fourteen,” I explained. “But he was in the insurance business. Life insurance.”

“I'm sorry,” Lars said.

“You must have cleaned up after that.”

I looked over at Joshua, but I couldn't read his expression. I couldn't tell whether or not he was being nice.

“Why? Oh, because he would have a big policy? Yeah, you'd think that, but they say it's like doctors smoking. He didn't leave much of anything.”

“But that's awful,” Judy said. “I didn't realize.”

“Wait—your dad was a life insurance salesman and he didn't have life insurance? Rude!” Joshua sounded annoyed.

“He had some,” I explained. “But it only covered the funeral costs. Anyhow, we're okay. He had good health insurance, so most of my brother Beau Ray's care is covered from here on out.”

“Beau Ray?” Joshua asked.

“Brother,” Judy said.

“Yeah, I got that,” Joshua said. He poured himself more wine. “What's wrong with brother Beau Ray?”

“He had a fall. Years back. He was playing touch football, no helmet, and he fell and hit up against a rock. For a while, the doctors said he was probably going to die, but he made it, only he's disabled.”

“Disabled how?”

“J.P.,” Judy hissed.

“I'm just asking,” he said. He sounded defensive.

“No, it's okay. It's not a secret. My dad always said that families shouldn't have secrets—except around the holidays, you know, with presents and all,” I said.

I told them—we talked about it pretty much through dinner and on into coffee. Judy and Lars kept asking for details. Joshua Reed didn't say much, but he did offer to refill my wineglass once, after refilling his own. I told them about Beau Ray and how he was more like a six-year-old than a twenty-nine-year-old, and how that wasn't likely to change for the better. I told them about Tommy doing construction up and down the Shenandoah. I told them about Susan and her three kids and her husband, Tim, who drove a truck down in Elkins. I told them about Momma and her job as a receptionist in a dentist's office and her weekends making quilts and how she hadn't been out with anyone since Dad died. I mentioned Vince and how he left the house that night when I was fourteen, and that except for a couple of phone calls early on, no one had heard from him, no one knew where he was and no one much talked about it anymore.

“Jesus,” Joshua said. “That's fucked up.”

“You never thought about going to college? You're clearly bright enough,” Judy asked, waving Joshua away.

I couldn't imagine ever waving him away, and here she was acting like it was no big deal. Judy was looking hard at me, so I knew I had to answer. I explained that I had figured on
college, but when the time came, Momma couldn't take care of Beau Ray on her own, and he was my brother, after all. I told her how, for a few years running, I'd been taking prelaw courses over in Shepherdstown—during the summer when things were slower at the dentist's office. Judy and Lars nodded.

“It'll happen eventually,” I said. “There are worse places to be than Pinecob.”

“I hope we'll get a chance to visit while we're here, don't you, Judy?” Lars asked.

“Of course,” Judy agreed.

“Jesus!” Joshua said, and all three of us looked over at him. I thought maybe he'd burned himself on something. His voice was that sharp. “You think she really believes you?”

“Josh—” Lars began, but Joshua kept going.

“No offense Leanne, but if I get a day off, I plan to find a city, or at least a good-sized suburb. There are a few too many gun racks around here for my taste.”

“J.P.!” Judy said.

“Josh, that's completely uncalled for,” Lars said.

“It's okay,” I said. I could tell that Lars was angry.

“It's not okay,” Lars snapped. He turned to Joshua. “None of your behavior tonight has been okay! None of your behavior on this entire trip has been okay! I want you to apologize to Leanne.”

Joshua turned and stared at me. I didn't know what to do. I felt like I was some sort of Goody Two-shoes I hadn't meant to be. Turns out, I didn't have to do anything. Joshua Reed turned back to Lars and ignored me altogether.

“I'm not your kid,” he said. “You want me to apologize because I don't want to go to Pinecob? Please! Like you guys would actually be caught dead there. Why the fuck am I even here? Leanne runs the fan club. Great. Wonderful. I'm sure she does a bang-up job. But that's your bag, Judy. Don't
drag me into it. I could be home in L.A., watching a Lakers game with my girlfriend. I did you a favor. I came to dinner.” Joshua stood up and stepped away from the table. He steadied himself on the back of his chair. “But I didn't agree to be hauled around and shown off in random bumfuck towns.”