Onward Toward What We're Going Toward (32 page)

“I was thinking that maybe . . . you know . . . maybe it was time to . . . ” he looked at her and winked “ . . . give it another try.”

“I don't think so.”

“Come on. It's been . . . Diane . . . let's . . . it's why I got you the dolls.”

“I haven't forgiven you, Chic.”

“Forgiven me. For what? Lijy?”

“I don't think I'll ever forgive you. For any of it. ”

He stood there staring at her. “Diane . . . ” he began, but she interrupted him.

“No. Don't say anything. Don't say another word. Just, please, get out. Just leave me alone. I want to be alone.”

He shut the door and stood in the dark hall. He didn't know what to think. He wanted to turn around and throw open the door and yell at her, raise his voice and scream at her. This wasn't his fault. None of this was his fault. Not one bit of it. Couldn't she see he was trying here? She had to work with him. She had to try, too. But he didn't open the door. He didn't do anything. He simply went down the hall to the bedroom, but he didn't want to sleep in the bedroom, so he went downstairs to the living room. He finished his beer and went into the kitchen and turned on the faucet to disguise the noise he was about to make. He crushed his beer can as quietly as he could and hid the can at the bottom of the garbage. Then he made himself a bed on the living room couch.

Lijy looked up Lexington on a map and saw that it was a tiny town, a mere gas stop on I-55 in the sea of corn between Middleville and Chicago. She left Buddy in charge of the store—telling him she was going to take Russ to the park for the afternoon—and made the hour-and-a-half drive.

The high school was on the edge of town, and the softball diamond was behind the school by the bus lot, which abutted a cornfield. Lijy parked the car on the street. Russ, who was eating raisins in the backseat, wanted to know where they were, and Lijy told him that they were on a secret mission and that he was never, ever to tell his daddy about it. Russ said he liked secret missions and popped a raisin in his mouth.

Lijy and Russ sat in the bleachers behind home plate. Down on the field, Ellis, his hair pulled back in a ponytail under a baseball cap, Ray-Ban sunglasses wrapped around his face, was hitting grounders to the infielders. Last year, his team had won the
Class A State finals, and over the past three seasons, their record was fifty-seven wins and only seven losses. This year, they were poised to make another run for the state championship. That would make two state championships and one-third place finish over the past four seasons. Deep down, however, Ellis knew that the team's success had little to do with his coaching and, more to do with the fact that Illinois's best female softball player, Colleen Popper, happened to live in Lexington. Colleen Popper was a broad-shouldered, beefy catcher with blonde hair and a .584 career batting average. She'd grown up the only girl in a family of five boy, and by the time she was seven was playing in the boys' Little League; by twelve, she was the tailback on the town's traveling peewee football team. In only ten games, she rushed for over a thousand yards.

Ellis noticed Lijy and Russ as soon as they took their seats in the bleachers. Seeing the two of them, he felt something inside of him move. He'd waited for this day for a long time. He'd dropped off the picture hoping to jumpstart things into action, and here it was happening; it was officially in motion. After he was done hitting grounders, he went to the bench, which was enclosed by a chain-link fence, while the girls took batting practice. He continually looked over at Russ and Lijy. Lijy kept a sharp eye on him as well. She thought she had made it clear that she didn't want anything to do with him and his phases and plans. If she hadn't been clear enough that afternoon at her house, she was going to be more than clear this time.

A big, blonde-haired girl went to the bench to put on her batting helmet and select a bat. Lijy noticed that there was something peculiar about the girl's interaction with Ellis. She kept nuzzling up to him, rubbing against him like a cat. Ellis kept stepping away from her and looking over at Lijy, smiling nervously. At one point, the big girl put her hand on Ellis's rear end, gave it a squeeze, then slipped her hand into his back pocket. She left it there until it was her turn to bat. She took her place in the batter's box. The pitcher, a small girl, looked worried. The blonde-haired girl tapped her bat on the plate
and took an aggressive stance, rear elbow out, squatting. The pitcher tried to speed an underhanded fastball by her, but the big girl ripped it over the centerfielder's head, the ball clanging against the chain-link fence. She sent the second pitch deep into the cornfield in right field. She pulled the third pitch foul, the softball skipping down the third base line, but she crushed the next pitch over the scoreboard in center. Then she was done. She went back to the bench, dragging her bat behind her. Ellis clapped and said, “That a girl. Good hittin'.” Passing Ellis, the girl craned her neck upward and tried to give him a kiss on the cheek, but he ducked away. Lijy couldn't believe what she was seeing. She'd known Ellis was a perverted snake who had seduced her with his quivering tongue, but . . . a high school girl? What was she thinking, coming here to Lexington? She didn't want to talk to him. She couldn't talk to him. A high school girl?

Lijy nudged Russ in the shoulder and told him it was time to go. Down on the field, the softball team huddled together on the pitching mound and did some sort of rah-rah cheer before sprinting off across the outfield toward the high school. The only player who didn't run off was the blonde girl. She put her glove on her head and moped around home plate, kicking dirt while Ellis picked up the batting helmets.

“Go,” Ellis said, waving her on. “I'll meet you in the parking lot.” Hanging her head, she slowly crossed the outfield.

After she had disappeared into the school, Ellis came over to the fence by the bleachers. Lijy had hung around just so she could tell him what a snake he was.

“Is that him?” Ellis asked.

“Of course it's him. Who do you think it is?”

“It's me,” Russ said.

“Do you know who I am?” Ellis poked a finger through the chain-link fence and wiggled it. “Hello. I'm me. You're you.”

Russ looked at his mother, not sure what was going on. “Who is he, Mom?”

“No one,” Lijy answered. “Russ, can you get my purse—I left
it in the bleachers.” Lijy had intentionally left her purse behind, knowing that she would need a minute alone to talk to Ellis.

She waited until Russ was out of earshot.

“I saw you—you and that girl, the big girl,” she said angrily. “She stuck her hand in your back pocket. She tried to kiss you.”

“I've been alone for ten years. Ten years! It's like I've been in the desert. I'm Simon of the Desert. Do you know that movie? That's me. I'm Simon. And you're the devil. The world is the devil. Everyone is the devil.”

“She's in high school.”

“She's gonna be eighteen in three months. And besides—you've seen her—she's a softball goddess.”

“No more disguises. No more visits to the store. I'm not part of your plan. I never have been and I never will be. I thought I made myself clear. I do not want to have anything to do with you ever,
ever
again.”

“From the moment we were together, you have been a big part of my plan and I have been a big part of your plan. You're the mother ship. You have radioactive flesh.”

“Look, I don't want you in my life anymore. Or Russ's. I don't want to be your mother ship. And what are you talking about, radioactive flesh?”

“I'm his father. You can't change that.”

“I've changed it. His father is Buddy. He actually has two fathers. He thinks his father is my brother-in-law. But anyway that's beside the point. Neither of them would let a high school girl grab his behind in public.” She thought that maybe Chic would allow this, but she wasn't sure.

“I'm blood. I'm the blood father. I'm the sperm. Look at him. He looks just like me.”

It was true. Russ looked like Ellis; he had his beady eyes and lanky long limbs. Later, when he got to college, he'd start pushing his glasses up on his nose when he was nervous and would have no idea it was a genetic tic passed down to him.

“I wanted to hurt Buddy. You were a warm body. You're right. You were sperm. That's it. That's all you were. It was a mistake, and I'm trying to clean that mistake up. That's my plan. I have a plan, too, you know.”

“I love when you get feisty like this.”

“Good-bye, Ellis.”

“Wait.”

“Leave us alone. Let us live our lives. And go about your life. Just . . . we're through, Ellis. And if you ever try to get into my life again, I'll . . . I don't know what I'll do, but I promise you won't like it.” Russ returned with the purse, and Lijy grabbed his hand and pulled him away.

Ellis threw his hat on the ground, jumped on it, then yelled, “You are ruining the plan, Lijy. This isn't part of the plan.”

“What's he talking about, Mommy?” Russ asked.

“Just ignore him, honey.”

“Give me your tired, your poor,” Ellis continued, getting dramatic, “your huddled masses yearning to be free. You want to be free, Lijy. I know you do. Come to me. Come back to me. You need me. I'll set you free.”

She kept walking toward the car with Russ, away from Ellis. “We're going to get some ice cream,” she told him, “and I'm going to tell you something that you can never, ever tell anyone.” Over ice cream, she'd explain everything. Of course, Russ wouldn't understand. He was only ten, but in time, he would understand. Maybe he'd never understand. No one really understands, really, why they do what they do. She wasn't sure she fully understood. Maybe he'd get angry. Maybe he'd cry. Maybe he'd cross his arms and stare at her. She couldn't take that. Her little boy, glaring at her. She could not take that. How could she tell Russ the truth, especially since she and Buddy had already told him the “truth” about her and Chic when he was four years old? Buddy had demanded she tell him, and even though she didn't really want to, she did it. The news about Ellis would spin Russ's world like
a top. It would mess him up. He might never recover, and she couldn't have that. Today wasn't the right time. Today, they'd just get ice cream, and she'd tell him how much she loved him because she did love him. She was protecting him. That was what she was doing. She was protecting him, and wasn't that what love was? That's how much she loved him. Buddy, too. She'd protected him. Both of them. Yes, she had hurt Buddy in the process of protecting him, but she had lessened the hurt with a lie, so that was still protection, still the truth. What was truth, really, if you wanted to get philosophical about it? Buddy was Russ's father, maybe not the biological one, but he was his father, and that was truth enough.

 

Diane stood on the bathroom scale. She waited a moment for the dial to settle. Two hundred and eighty-seven pounds. She'd dropped fifteen pounds. For the past two weeks, inspired by something Dr. Peale had said on his program—“Have great hopes and dare to go all out for them. Have great dreams and dare to live them. Have tremendous expectations and believe in them.”—she had been on a drastic diet, trading in raw hot dogs and soda for black tea and bananas.

Energized by her weight loss, Diane threw herself into getting the house in order. She started in the bedroom, picking up the clothes that were strewn about like a garage sale, the soda bottles on the nightstand, the old plates of food that had been pushed under the bed. She cleaned the baseboards and wiped the dust from the blades of the box fan. She reorganized the shoes in her closet, lining them up by style. She folded the clothes in her drawers, and in Chic's drawers, too. Then she moved to the bathroom, scrubbing the tub, sink, and toilet. In the kitchen, she cleaned out the fridge. She swept the front porch and the driveway and the sidewalk in front of the house. She cleaned out the gutters and weeded the barren patch of ugly earth in the backyard where Chic had tried to dig a pool. She cleared out the attic, pulling out the boxes and labeling them with black marker—CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS, OLD PHOTOS, etc. She vacuumed the whole house. The cleaning fit took three days. Once or twice, Chic asked if he could help, but she said she didn't want his help. The house hadn't been this spotless since the day
they moved in. She demonstrated how clean it was by wiping her finger in random places and showing Chic. “See, no dust here.”