Now and Again (26 page)

E
very year, DC took his family on a camping trip at the end of the summer, and as the date approached, Valerie became more and more irritable. She huffed and moaned and made cryptic gestures in the direction of the office where DC sat with his hands clasped together and his head bowed over his work. When Maggie asked what was wrong, Valerie said, “I'm going to be ill. I'm going to be physically ill.” Once DC left for his vacation, she started to miss work—first it was a broken alternator and then it was a summer cold.

With the director away and Valerie in and out, the office echoed with absence. Maggie's eyes strayed to the bank of locked files in DC's office, and when a bumblebee lit on the tall steel cabinet, it seemed an invitation to search for Valerie's keys, which were easily found in her desk drawer, to stand on a chair, and to crush the brittle body in a scrap of paper from the waste bin—and, while she was at it, to slip the key into the lock on DC's personal file cabinet and slide open one of the heavy drawers. She was so preoccupied she didn't remember until too late that bees were dying left and right and that if people wanted fruit crops to exist in the world of the future, they needed to protect pollinators and not annihilate them. She rushed to the waste bin, but the bee was a smear of body parts. It was impossible to think of everything at once!

Maggie's heart was thumping in her chest as she climbed back up on the chair. She had let the bee distract her, and she knew that lack of focus could lead to fateful mistakes. The hair on her arms stood on end as she opened the second-to-top file drawer and finally the top one. The air was buzzing as if it were full of bees or as if a warning bell was warming up for a full alarm. She knew Valerie wasn't really sick and might show up at any moment. She even imagined DC might hear his own buzzing, leave his family zipped in their tent beside the Red River, and come rushing back to the office to catch her in the act. When someone dropped a stapler in the copy alcove, Maggie froze on the chair, swaying slightly and cocking her head toward the door, but no one appeared. Footsteps clumped down the hallway. Someone laughed. A minute later, the copy machine chugged to life.

The topmost drawer was the one she had seen Valerie open the day she had worn the inappropriate blouse and Maggie had watched her from the hallway. Right at the front of the drawer was a training brochure on prison discipline and a pamphlet called “You and STDs,” both of which she skimmed before slipping them into the waistband of her skirt. The PATH woman had been right about solitary confinement: among other things, prisoners had no right to question their confinement and the term of such confinement should not exceed ten years, although that was not a hard-and-fast rule. Ten years! thought Maggie. The idea of it was enough to break a person's heart.

At the very back of the drawer was an unmarked accordion folder, and in the folder was a heart-shaped card from DC to Valerie that said, “Be good while I'm away.” Scrawled beneath the message was the address of the River Motel. And there, fallen down behind the unmarked folder, was the missing draft legislation.

A printout of a series of emails was tucked inside the cover, with a subject line saying
THE SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS ACT: DRAFT 3.2.
The email exchange started off:

Maggie's hands were trembling as she put the document into the top drawer of her desk. More people stuck to the flypaper, she thought. More money lining the pockets of the people in charge!

She spent the rest of the day devising ways to smuggle the draft legislation and her other files out of the prison and shuddering to imagine what would happen if she was caught. All personnel were subject to random searches, and there was never any telling how thoroughly the exit guards would search an employee's purse and bags. She decided to start with something small, so as a trial run, she tucked the pamphlet on STDs into the bottom of her purse. Then she zipped the one on prison discipline into the side pouch where she kept her sunglasses.

She had wanted to leave with the five o'clock rush, but without Valerie to do her share of work, it was almost six by the time she reached the exit. Her heart sank to see that no one else was waiting in line for security—only Hugo was there, twiddling his thumbs and grinning at her. “Good evening, Hugo,” said Maggie, hoping she didn't look as nervous as she felt.

“ID, ma'am,” Hugo replied.

“Oh, Hugo! You know who I am!” exclaimed Maggie.

“When a guard asks for documentation, the employee must immediately produce it,”
said Hugo, reciting from the handbook.

Maggie opened her purse and fumbled around in it, finally producing both her ID badge and her driver's license.

“Employees must wear the ID badge at all times while on prison premises,”
recited Hugo.

At first Maggie had regretted the kiss, but now she wondered if she could use it to her advantage. “Any plans for the weekend?” she asked in an insinuating tone of voice.

“Maybe I'll get lucky,” said Hugo.

“Luck comes in two flavors,” said Maggie. “Good luck and bad.”

Hugo made a show of starting to open the electronic door, but then he tapped his temple as if he had just remembered something. “I can search you or your bag, ma'am—your choice,” he said with a nasty smile.

None of the women wanted to be searched, so if Maggie opted for a pat down, it would be obvious she had something to hide and Hugo would search her bag anyway. Sweat was breaking out on her forehead and under her arms, but there didn't seem to be a good alternative to continuing on the course she had started. As she held the bag open, she said, “You naughty boy,” all the while hoping the scarf and the sweater and the homemaking magazine that were stuffed into the purse would provide ample cover for the pamphlet hidden beneath them. Then she winked and said, “Search away.” But it made her stomach turn to watch Hugo's beefy hands push the sweater aside and pull carelessly at the delicate scarf.

“Good Housekeeping,”
said Hugo, sliding the magazine out of the bag. “My mother reads that.”

“Tell her there's a fabulous recipe for lemon bars in the July issue. I'd tell you the secret ingredient, but then it wouldn't be secret.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Maggie regretted them. Why had she said the word “secret”? It was almost as if she wanted to get caught.

Hugo dug out Maggie's pink pearl lipstick and her baggie of emergency tampons and finally the pamphlet on prisoners and sexually transmitted diseases. “What's this?” he asked.

“It's a pamphlet on STDs,” said Maggie, trying not to look at the zippered compartment where the pamphlet on prison discipline was concealed.

“I mean, what are you doing with it?”

“It's very well written. And as you might or might not know, I have a teenaged son.”

“Hmph,” said Hugo, leering again as he stuffed the items back into her purse. “So you're going to talk to him about the birds and the bees, are you? What, exactly, are you going to say?”

All Maggie could think of was the bee she had killed earlier in the day, so she was late in replying. “Yes, I am. I'm going to tell him that love and sex are two different things and that he should be aware of the risks and take steps to protect himself.”

“Protect himself from love or from sex?” asked Hugo, belching out a laugh. Then he pushed the purse back at her and let her pass.

Maggie took her time walking across the baking asphalt to the bus stop, swinging her hips and wishing an evening breeze would break through the unrelenting humidity and cool her burning cheeks. The good news was that she had successfully gotten the two pamphlets out of the prison, even if the bad news was that Hugo had found one of them. But she had learned something, and she had to be happy about that. When she got home, she added the pamphlet on prison discipline to her stash of evidence before making her way to the kitchen, where Will and Lyle were eating the last of a chocolate cake.

“We're spoiling our dinner,” said Lyle.

“I guess I can't stop you,” said Maggie. Then she put the pamphlet on STDs on the table and said, “I got this up at the prison, Will. You might want to take a look.”

“That's really embarrassing, Mom.”

“You're going to have to make a lot of decisions for yourself at some point, so you might as well have the facts.”

“Gosh, Mom. What's going on?”

“You're growing up, that's all,” said Maggie.

“She just wants you to be prepared,” said Lyle. “In case she's abducted by Martians or whisked off to Hollywood to star in a film.”

W
hen the weekend came, Lyle drove Will to Glorietta for the first game of the summer play-offs. If they won, they moved on to the next bracket. If they lost, they were out. The mayor was standing at the entrance to the ballpark, handing out campaign buttons that said
CALL ME BUDDY
even though his name was Robert Hutchinson and up until then, everybody had called him Hutch.

“I guess he wants the citizens of Red Bud to think of him as inseparable from the town,” said Will.

“It's all about winning friends and influencing people,” Lyle said. “I read about it in a book.”

“When did you ever read a book?” asked Will.

“Jimmy gave it to me. It said you have to make people think that whatever you want them to do is actually their idea.”

“Hmmm,” said Will. “That sounds like something the teachers up at school would do.”

It seemed that the whole town had driven up for the game. Jimmy charged past, headed toward the stands with Lily De Luca in tow. “Pre-med!” Jimmy called out. “That's pretty heady stuff!”

“That's an example of your theory right there,” said Will, but Lyle only beamed and called back to Jimmy, “Tell me something I don't know!”

Mr. Quick waved over the heads of his wife and baby, and Lucas Enright, who had owned the diner for as long as anybody could remember, wished Will and Lyle both luck as if Lyle were on the team too. By the time Will hurried off to find his teammates, he was seething with an unfamiliar rage. When Stucky Place slapped his shoulder and said, “Here comes our secret weapon,” it took him a few seconds to respond, and during the warm-up, it seemed to be pure chance that determined whether he caught the ball or dropped it. Only the sight of Tula sitting in the third row eating a candy bar calmed him. From that distance he couldn't tell what kind it was, but he could imagine the crinkling sound of the paper as she pulled it back to take a bite and the soft wet sounds as she chewed and swallowed.

“Rayburn, get your head in the game!” called the coach.

Will mouthed, “Yes sir,” but all he could think about was Tula. He could almost taste the chocolate and feel the crunch of the peanuts and the pulling of the caramel when it stuck to her molars.

Ever since breaking his arm, Will had felt that something else in him had broken. Where he had once done things without thinking too much about them, his head was now bursting with all of the advice his coaches had given him over the years: keep your weight back and your head down, square your hips, stay inside the ball, choke up on two strikes, make sure to follow through. And now there were advice and expectations on the academic side of things as well.

“You're trying too hard,” said the team captain just as the coach interrupted to say, “Try a little harder, Rayburn. Give it everything you've got.”

“Muscle memory,” said Stucky. “That's the way to go.”

Will was thinking about Tula, but also about his life goals, which didn't seem to fit him right, as if he had put on somebody else's uniform. The test scores hadn't helped. Now there were college applications to fill out and essays to write. Mr. Quick had agreed to help him over the summer, but when Will had shown him a draft of his overcoming challenges essay, the effort had been greeted with a frown. “It sounds like the soldier you met at the clinic is the one who is overcoming the challenges,” said Mr. Quick. “The essay is supposed to be about you.”

Mr. Quick, who had once insisted learning was the point, started to go on about commitment and excellence and the importance of grades. “If a thing is worth doing,” he said, “it's worth doing well.” So now Will was adding a paragraph about his broken arm and baseball, but he worried it sounded like he was comparing his injury to a war wound and a baseball game to war. If only something significant had happened to him, but it hadn't.

A ball whizzed past Will's ear. He hadn't even seen it, but he recovered enough to relay the ball home, where the runner was tagged out. That left a man on second. The next batter grounded to the shortstop, who pitched the ball to third. The ball made a soft thud in the pocket of Will's glove, but just as he stepped back onto the base and reached out to tag the player who was hurtling toward him, his wrist went limp. The ball fell to the ground, and the umpire shouted, “Safe!”

“Libby, go in for Will,” called the coach.

Will's ears burned as he walked off the field. He didn't look at the stands where he knew his parents and Tula were sitting and worrying about him. He chewed a piece of Juicy Fruit gum and tried to empty his mind the way it used to be empty. He shrugged his shoulders and tried not to care the way he used to not care. He tried to feel like Derek Jeter coming back from a dislocated shoulder to help his team make it to the World Series. Of course, all of that was in the future for Jeter as he faced Martinez in the eighth inning with his team trailing the Red Sox 5-2, hoping against hope that his shoulder would hold up and not knowing he was about to hit a double that would start an epic rally because no one, not even Jeter, could know what the future would hold.