The Most Wanted (11 page)

“Come on,” I said to Elena, “give me a break. Maybe he really likes Langtry and I should tell her to write to him.”

“Well,” Elena said, “I don’t think Langtry would want much to do with him. I think he sounds like he’s gay.”

I sat down hard on the mushroom chair Elena had at the end of her bed. “Cut it out!” she shouted. “You’re going to make me smear on nine!”

“What do you mean, gay?”

“I mean all that talk about ‘a woman like yourself’ and stuff. Regular guys don’t talk like that.”

“How do you know?” I yelled back. “Dillon reads a lot. Who do we know except dumb high school boys?”

“I think he sounds like Mister Joybutt.” She meant Mr. Jabeaut, who taught French and ran the drama club. It was Elena started the nickname, after she saw somebody in a movie called that. I thought it was nasty and small, even though Mr. Jabeaut could be a little too much sometimes and always wore a scarf around his neck, even in summer. But nasty as it was, it was also funny. In fact, I could feel the muscles by my mouth jumping the minute she said it, even though I was fit to be tied.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t think he sounds that way at all. Maybe I won’t show you any more of his letters, if you don’t care.”

“I care,” she said. “I just think he sounds like a big asshole. You know, I’ve read Connie’s letters too—she don’t know it—but old Kevin is just like his brother. He thinks the Spurs are just waiting for him to get out of jail so he can play point guard. Who do those LeGrande boys think they are?”

I didn’t say anything, but deep inside, I had a tap of doubt, followed by an anger that closed over that doubt like a fist. “Look, you’re my best friend. You’re not my mother.” She gave me that look that said, clear as day, Excuse me?

“Now, that’s the truth. Your mother probably has some good advice about stuff like this. Why don’t you ask her?” Elena said, being nasty.

“Elena, I know you think I haven’t been telling you enough stuff. And I know I promised I’d tell you everything.” It was true. We were pledged, with a real pact. It sounds like a kid thing now, but we took it seriously; I still do. We swore major truth to tell each other our worst and best for all life and to honor each other’s trust. So far, we’d never failed. We even had a code. In front of other people, Elena would signal me, “That’s an ITH.” It meant “in the house,” or, as my French teacher would say,
“entre nous.”
It would never go further than us. We wanted to swear in blood, but we’d had it drilled into us all our lives that you never, ever exchange big time bodily fluids with anybody, no matter how much you love the person, so we each chewed a piece of gum and then we switched them. Elena said we were “spit sisters.” So that night, I said to her, “I know I’m wrong in keeping this inside. But I just feel weird, and you don’t have to go off on me about it.”

Elena looked me up and down. I looked her right back. I’m shy, but I don’t like people making me drop my eyes; and this was big, so I sure wasn’t going to do it right then. Finally, she looked at her pinkie toe.

“Okay,” said Elena. “I don’t think he likes Lang. I think he likes you. And I think he’s also putting on more than he could really feel, since he never even saw you. But I can imagine how a man would get that way, sitting by himself.”

“What about him calling collect? I mean, if I’m this big college girl and all, how can I say, Don’t you dare call me?”

“Have him call you at my house.”

“And your parents get the collect call? That’s totally brilliant. Duh.”

“They won’t get the bill right away. We could think of something. Kevin calls Connie. We could just say it was that.”

“Wouldn’t Connie know?”

“Yeah.”

“Would she tell?”

Elena started to laugh. “Yeah. Because my dad has a shit fit every time he sees one of those phone calls. Even if she pays him.”

“So that won’t work. What else?”

“Write and tell him you’re living with your mother while you’re getting a new apartment.”

So that’s what I did.

But one Saturday morning, my mama was right there when the phone rang. I picked it up. He sounded like the stage actor who came to school to read from Mark Twain. Just this sweet voice, low but not rough, not scary, with some big old fat accent. A real man’s voice. “This is a collect call,” the operator said, “from . . .”

“Dillon Thomas LeGrande. Ma’am.”

And I said, “No one here by that name.”

The operator’s voice got all flat and pissed. “It’s
from
him, honey. Not trying to get him.”

“Oh, well,” I said, trying to stretch the cord out into the living room from the kitchen. “I just can’t accept that call. I just really can’t. Now.” Mama didn’t even notice.

But he wouldn’t let up! He said, “Operator, ask her again, please. Ask the party whether she will accept . . . this call from Dillon LeGrande.” Like he was saying accept
him.
But I just had to say the same thing again. “Sorry . . .” And when I got off, and Mama kind of looked at me, I didn’t even try to explain. I just said, “Wrong number, I guess.” All I wanted to do was be alone so I could think over the way I could hear the breath come out of him, his very breath from his body against my ear. At the beginning, I was so flustered when I talked to Dillon, especially when I was with him, that I had to get away and remember him, word by word, to make him more real.

I felt like a fool. But Dillon somehow got a letter to me right that Monday, and he told me my voice sounded like hand bells. “I have to see you,” he wrote. “I need to look at your eyes to see if you’re real.”

Well, I wrote him back a bunch of nonsense about my mother trying to buy her a new house, so that it really wasn’t fair to put collect calls on her bill. That I didn’t have a driver’s license, because I didn’t have a car—I said I couldn’t afford one with paying for college and all. I offered to send him a picture of me (an old one—I had to say it was old!). It took a few days for him to write again. And he didn’t even bring up the visit. I could have cried with relief. He just asked who my favorite poet was. “Obviously,” he said, “my favorite is the Irishman Dylan Thomas, my namesake. He’s my namesake whether he wants to be or not!”

My favorite poet was Sara Teasdale. I think I’ve outgrown her now. The truth is, I still love her, but I know she’s sentimental and foolish. Back then, though, when Mrs. Murray gave this one talk about “Sara Teasdale, or Why Bad Poetry Is Written,” I was shocked. I had to believe it was because Mrs. Murray never had the kind of feelings Sara Teasdale wrote about, which must have been so sad they were unbearable, because she killed herself.

In the next letter, I put in part of one of her poems. I was trying to get him to see that you didn’t have to be with a person you cared about every minute to feel the person’s love. It goes like this:

It is enough for me by day

To walk the same bright earth with him

Enough that over us by night

The same great roof of stars is dim.

I also told Dillon I didn’t have very many friends. “I guess you can count all the Gutierrezes,” I wrote. “And Paula Currain and Cora Allen on the track team. And Luz, the other waitress on our shift at Taco.” I told him about Mr. Justice too. “This old man, Ginny (that’s the owner of Taco Haven) really hates having him come in, because he sits around humming and playing the air fiddle. She says he used to be a musician, but now he’s just a crazy old drunk. Ginny says his name is Remy Justice (is Remy a French name, like LeGrande?), and that he’s a woodsy, which means he lives out in the scrub someplace. I think it means he’s homeless. But I like him. He calls me ‘Miss Mowbray.’ And the other day, you know what? He said he was going to make me a stile to practice hurdling at home. I run track. (Did I tell you that?) I thought that was real nice. But Ginny said, ‘You keep clear of that one, girl. He ain’t a bad man. But he’s crazier than a cootebray.’ I think that’s not too fair, though. Everybody has their troubles.”

And then I stuck some stickers on it, bats and cactus, that I got at Oberly’s. They were kind of juvenile, but I thought they would cheer him up, remind him of what he said about his grandpa’s old ranch. He wrote back, just a card, saying that a true friend was rarer than a great steak, which I thought was kind of weird, and saying he’d really like that picture of me. So I sent him one then, the best one I had, which Elena took. I was in my track silks, but it wasn’t the one they used later in the magazine. Both pictures showed I have nice legs—they’re my best thing, except my hair—but they weren’t revealing or anything.

And then that week started. The week that ended with Eric Dorey’s party on Saturday, which led to my going to the prison the next Saturday. The week that changed everything.

What it was, was this. He didn’t write back.

He didn’t write back for two days, and so I waited until Monday. He didn’t write by Wednesday, and so I figured the mail was just a little slow. By Friday, I was frantic.

We had our second practice of the week that day. At first it wasn’t so bad. We just practiced coming out of the blocks. Coach had us watch Paula, because she had that real slingshot motion you try to get, how you just throw yourself forward without really standing up. We broke up to run our events. People think you
jump
over hurdles; after all, even the low hurdles look pretty high. But what you really do is you just run over them. Going over the hurdle is part of your stride. If you have the length in your legs, you get up your speed and you measure your steps and you sail over without stopping. You never stop getting a little sore from it, but I suppose it’s like a dancer going up on her toes; it just gets to be what you do. I’m a pretty natural runner. That day, though I’m normally more nervous at a practice than at a meet, from trying to be perfect, I wasn’t paying any mind to anything. I was what Coach Diaz used to call “in your body.” Even when Coach had some of the older girls watch me, which would usually make me so self-conscious I’d miss my stride, I kept going. It was like I could hear an engine inside me, revving and whining, and all I had to do was follow that sound. When he called for wind sprints, I didn’t count them like I used to; I just fell right in. I couldn’t do enough: twenty yards, stop, and back—twenty yards, stop, and back. When I looked up, everybody else had gone in to change. Coach was standing there with his fingers hooked in his belt loops, grinning.

“Take five, Mowbray. Save some for next week. You’re a steeplechaser,” he said.

I got on the scale after practice, and I’d lost four pounds since morning.

Right then, right after my shower, I went out behind the practice facility, and I got out some of my special paper and wrote this note:

Dear Dillon,

 

I’m sure you’re very busy with your own life, but it’s been so long. Not that a week is a very long time, but it feels long. Letters are really a treat for me. It’s like getting a present. But anyhow, if you don’t want to write anymore, that’s okay too. I will miss hearing from you.

 

Arley

What I really wanted to write was, Now that you saw my picture, do you think I’m ugly or something? Can you tell I’m only fourteen? Did I let too much show with that stupid poem? Are you sick of me? But I didn’t say any of that. I did mail that letter second-day, even though I knew it was a waste of money because it would get there Monday, anyhow. And then I waited for a letter on Saturday.

No letter came.

That morning, I got a blank card out of my underpants drawer. I don’t know when I bought it. It had a picture of a little river flowing into the sea, and underneath it said, “The biggest chance is just ahead. . . .” But I wrote on the inside:

Dear Dillon,

 

Probably by now you really think I’m just a pest. Maybe you’re sick or really busy or dealing with a big crisis in your family. Or maybe you have a girlfriend now, and she doesn’t want you writing to anyone else, even just as friends. I would like to know, but you don’t have to tell me.

I looked up your name, LeGrande, in my French vocabulary. Not your name, really, but the parts of it, as words. And it means “the great” or “the biggest one” or “the most.” The card I’m enclosing here is really a New Year’s card, but I was going to give it to you now, sort of in advance of the new year and your birthday. It reminded me of your name when I saw it because it says this year is going to be the biggest one yet. So if I don’t get to talk to you again, at least you know somebody wishes that for you. I hope you get more than you ever hoped from this year, and from the rest of your life from now on.

 

With love,

Arlington Mowbray