Onward Toward What We're Going Toward (4 page)

“That's right.”

“How's your mother doing? I used to see her around town, but I ain't seen her in a while.”

“My mother's a stinking polecat, and don't you ever ask about her again. You hear?” He left the man standing in his backyard with his cigarette and dog.

Inside, he found Diane and her parents standing in the living room, Phyllis Glover explaining something about south-facing windows. Diane made eye contact with Chic and smiled.

“We'll take it,” Chic said.

Diane's father shot him a look, and Chic immediately felt like he'd done something wrong.

“Honey,” Diane said. “We haven't even looked at the upstairs yet.”

“Yeah, Chic. Patience,” her father said.

“It's not like we're not going to like the upstairs. It's just bedrooms, right? We're just going to sleep up there.”

They moved in three weeks later. Chic picked up his life where he had left off before the honeymoon, punching the clock every morning at the pumpkin cannery. He wore a hard helmet and white lab coat and stood in a giant, airy room watching cans of Junior's Pumpkins blur by on a conveyor belt. His job was to detect imperfections—dents, torn labels, anything that would diminish the appeal of a can on a store shelf. If he saw something, he stopped the belt and took a closer look. Chic had an impeccable eye for defects, and Mr. Meyers told him it was only a matter of time before he was promoted out of quality control to a management position on the second floor where he'd have a secretary who answered the phone and a desk stocked with pencils. In fact, Mr. Meyers told Chic that he was grooming his own son, Butch, for one of those jobs. A year younger than Chic, Butch was a senior in high school and already looked the part of management; he wore his hair combed to the side and horn-rimmed spectacles, and after school he spent two hours doing an “internship,” which basically meant he emptied garbage cans.

Chic knew those offices on the second floor well. During his first week on the job, he had found himself on the second floor delivering some mail that had accidentally found its way to the production area. He asked an elderly woman, a secretary, which office had belonged to Bascom Waldbeeser. It had been nearly fifteen years since his grandfather worked at the cannery, but the woman pointed to a closed door. So, it was true. After his made-up story about the founding of Middleville, Chic wasn't sure if he should take anything his grandfather said at face value. Chic looked back at the woman and asked if he could go inside. She nodded that it was fine, and Chic took hold of the door. The room wasn't an office but a storage closet stacked with broken typewriters, boxes of pencils, and other office supplies. “He didn't have a desk,” the woman said. “He had a cart.”

Chic wasn't sure he understood.

“When he got too old to work on the production floor, he was
moved up here to deliver supplies to the offices.” She motioned to the office doors along the corridor. “Pretty much, though, he just kept the closet organized. You're BJ's grandson, aren't ya?”

Chic nodded.

“Didn't your mother just move down to Florida?”

Chic closed his eyes. He didn't want to talk about his mother. Everyone was always asking about his mother.

“How's she like it? Florida would be too hot for me. Nice in the winter, though. But, hey, are you okay? You don't look so good. You feeling okay?”

“I think I should get some air.”

“Yeah. Right. Okay. Hey, when you talk to your mother, tell her Ellen Hastings said hello.”

The Cape Cod needed fixing up, and Chic got to work. Up along the house, he planted box elder bushes. He cleaned out the gutters. He built a workbench at the back of the garage and hung some tools on the Peg-Board above the bench. He nailed up wainscoting in the dining nook. He painted the bedroom walls. Sometimes he'd be working and would feel like someone was looking at him, and he'd glance over his shoulder, and there would be his neighbor standing in a window, staring. Chic would wave, but the guy would just shut the shades.

Diane did light housecleaning, and every morning Chic showered and headed off to the cannery. Walking to the locker room, carrying his lunchbox, he often saw Mr. Meyers in his office that overlooked the production floor. He was always drinking a cup of coffee and looking down at some papers spread out on his desk, a pencil behind his ear, a look of fear on his face, like at any moment the pumpkin cannery could disappear into a sinkhole and be gone forever. Mr. Myers turned forty the week Chic started at the cannery, and Chic thought it was odd that he was already bald. Forty years old and totally bald. Chic didn't want to feel that same sort of fear that made a guy lose his hair. He wanted to feel like he felt right now, at nineteen. He lived in
Middleville, which was a bit of a misnomer, since the town wasn't exactly in the center of the state—it was a bit southwest of center, actually. If one flew over it in a plane, it probably wouldn't even be noticed. It was simply a cluster of houses and a school, a gas station, a couple of parks, and a few churches, all of which sprouted out of the Illinois dirt the way corn sprouted every June. Chic sometimes stood in his house and thought about how this was his town. He knew everyone—the teachers at the high school, the people at Stafford's, the grocery store. Everyone. And everyone knew him. Chic liked the comfort in that, even if everyone knew him as the son of the man who sat down behind his barn and froze himself to death. Knowing everyone took the surprise out of life, and Chic Waldbeeser didn't want life jumping out of the bushes and surprising him.

At Christmas, Mrs. von Schmidt decorated her house with an artificial, feather tree with gold balls and hung stockings on the mantel. When Chic saw the stockings, he stared at them, his hands in his pockets. When he was a boy, Christmas had never been anything but his mother clomping around in the kitchen, cussing under her breath. She would spend all morning making ham with slices of pineapple while his father sat in the living room drinking Scotch and staring at the snow. When dinner was ready, he, his mother, Buddy, their grandfather and his wife, June, Chic's grandmother, ate in the dining room. Their grandfather kept yelling over to his son to join them at the table, but he always ate in the living room, sitting in his chair, the plate in his lap. Their grandfather was always yelling at their father, although it wasn't really yelling because he couldn't really yell, but the tone was meant to be a yell. Their father just sat there in his chair while their grandfather went on and on about how he, Chic's father, needed to get his “act together.”

Mr. von Schmidt owned a guitar, a nylon string model, and after Christmas dinner, Chic got it and plucked the strings, hoping he'd get the hint. Maybe they'd sing a Christmas carol, but
Mr. von Schmidt was asleep on the couch, his socked feet kicked up on the coffee table, and Diane and her mom were in the kitchen banging out the dishes. Chic put the guitar down and picked through his Christmas gifts—a pair of wool socks and a pewter statue of a father holding the hand of a little boy, a dog following behind.

About an hour later, when Diane asked Chic to run over to their house to pick up the ice cream, he was happy to oblige. It was a giant balloon of boredom in the living room, and besides, whenever Diane asked him to run an errand, it gave Chic a chance to check up on Lijy. Ever since the back rub at the reception, Chic couldn't stop thinking about her. He had no idea why it had happened, but he didn't care. It wasn't even the back rub, although it had felt so good, that fired his imagination. It was that she had grabbed him and pulled him over to the empty table and told him to take off his tuxedo jacket and untuck his shirt. No one had ever done anything like that to him—unprovoked and out of nowhere like that. Chic knew it was wrong that he let himself think about her, but he was weak. He was a dead tree branch in a thunderstorm. He was a goner when it came to Lijy Waldbeeser.

Buddy's house had classical pillars and a driveway that made a looping U so you never had to put the car in reverse. Chic slowed to a stop in front, then dug the binoculars out from under the seat. Through the living room window, he saw Lijy massaging Buddy's shoulders. Buddy didn't even seem to care about the back rub he was getting. He was reading the newspaper. Lijy leaned over and kissed him on top of the head.

The summer after Buddy graduated from high school, he packed his coin collection in two, hard-shell suitcases and ducked his head into Chic's bedroom one morning (Chic was sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed, reading a Batman comic book) and told him he was leaving. Before Chic could say anything, Buddy padded down the stairs. Chic heard the front screen door
creak open and bang shut. He got up and glanced out the window and saw Buddy walking across the front yard carrying the two suitcases. When Buddy reached the gravel shoulder of Route 121, he sat the suitcases down and visored the sun out of his eyes so that he could see if a car was coming.

Chic pushed open the window and yelled down to him. “Ou-ay going tay?”

“Are you trying to speak pig Latin?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, that's not right.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don't wanna talk about it.”

“Ou-tay back-ay?”

“Quit talking like that.”

“Where you going?”

“Gettin' out of here. I'm done with Middleville.”

“Ou-taaa back aaaaa?”

“Quit talking like that. It's not right. You're not doing it right.” Buddy turned back to the road. There wasn't a car in sight, only pumpkin fields and a dusty ditch. Chic closed the window and went back to reading his comic book. Knowing Buddy, this was just a ploy to get attention. He'd get a ride into town, and by dark, he'd be back home, in his room, polishing his coins and waiting for dinner.

A few hours later, Chic was called to dinner by his mother. She'd set three places at the table. She told Chic that Tom McNeeley would not be joining them for dinner. Chic picked up his fork and scooped up some mashed potatoes. His mother asked where Buddy was. Chic explained that he'd gone off to get out of Middleville and maybe he was going . . . he didn't know where he was going. He'd carried two suitcases out to the road. His mother shrugged and went about eating. “He'll be back,” she said.

By the spring of 1951, Diane and her mother were spending a lot of time together in the kitchen nook. Sometimes, they both peeked in at Chic while he sat in his easy chair watching
The Life
of Riley
or
The Lone Ranger
, then ducked around the corner out of earshot to whisper and giggle. If Chic could have quit daydreaming about Lijy, he would have realized that Diane was pregnant. But he couldn't quit daydreaming about Lijy. At first, he thought he could control it. When it was time not to think about her, he'd try to push her out of his mind and that would be that. But he couldn't stop, so he closed his eyes and thought about her standing on the edge of the dance floor picking lint off her sari. He thought about her rubbing his back. He thought about what she could possibly be doing while Buddy was out doing what he did with his coins. He wanted to feel her touch him again. It was almost too much for him to handle. Actually, it was too much for him to handle. So one night when he thought Buddy was out of town, Chic parked a few blocks away on Magnolia Street and walked up the sidewalk to the house and climbed the porch stairs. Before he knocked, he quickly fixed his hair.

She opened the door and blinked at him.

“I'm Chic. Buddy's brother.”

“I know who you are.”

“Well, you're looking like you don't.”

“You see Buddy out there anywhere?”

Chic turned around. There wasn't anything happening on the street. It was eight o'clock on Tuesday.

Lijy grabbed his arm and pulled him inside.

“You sure you didn't see Buddy out there?”

“I thought . . . isn't he traveling?”

“I never know when he's here or gone or wherever. Did you talk to him today?”

Chic could tell she was upset. “I don't talk to Buddy very often.”

“I don't know when he will be here. Maybe tomorrow. The next day. Maybe the day after that. So, I guess, you came over to talk to him.”

“I came over to see you.”

She should have realized—of course, he wanted to see her. She remembered the wedding reception, the back rub. Then an idea just kinda came to her all of a sudden.

“Why don't you come sit down?” She motioned toward the sofa.

Chic sat down. Lijy sat next to him, then felt odd and sat in the easy chair across from him.

“Do you want to listen to some music?”

Chic nodded.

Lijy got up and put on a record, “In a Sentimental Mood” by Duke Ellington. She closed her eyes and nodded along with the melody. When the song was finished, she told Chic it reminded her of Buddy. He had bought her the record, or maybe he'd already had it. She couldn't remember. She wanted to know if he liked it. Chic said he did, but he hadn't really paid attention. He couldn't believe he was sitting across from her in the living room. He got up and went to the window and peeled back the curtain and looked outside over the front lawn.

“Is it okay if I'm here?”

“If Buddy came in the front door, he'd walk right through the room and never even notice.”

To Lijy, Chic had the same look as Buddy: puffy, sad cheeks that pulled his whole face into a frown. He looked sadder than sad. He looked defeated. Or actually that wasn't quite right. He was too young to be defeated. He looked on the road to defeat. Buddy was on that same road, pulled over to the ditch and broke down, the hood raised. She could be the one to change that—for Buddy. That's all she ever really wanted. She just wanted to be the one to help him, and she could; she knew she could. She tried to tell Buddy, but he wasn't ever really there, like
there
there, like present. She'd seen him hold animated conversations with no one, with air. Once, she heard him in the kitchen carrying on about this and that, and when she walked in, he was pointing his finger at nothing and snarling, “And that's not what you did.”
Mostly, though, he stared off into some middle distance, some spot on the wall, and she'd ask him if he heard her, and he'd say, “No. I'm sorry. Were you saying something?”