“I won’t tell.”
But when we make our way down the road, over the brush, and into the woods that border the brook, I realize that Gabe may have been talking about a different secret altogether. Here, where the brook bends and the water collects in a little pool, is a rickety house. A stick-and-board house tall enough to stand in.
“Who built this?”
“Who do you think?”
“You did? When did you do this?”
“Well, actually, it began as Matt and Timmy’s house. But I followed them one day, and they had to let me help. That makes it mine, too.”
I can’t believe how cool it is, but when I walk inside expecting, I don’t know, miniature furniture and a table set for tea, I’m disappointed. There are naked ladies on the walls, dirty magazines and beer cans on the floor, and the place smells like smoke and beer. The only things cool about the inside are some candles in tuna cans, a smiley-face water pillow, and a photograph of Gabe and his brothers taped above the door.
Gabe starts to show me some stuff in a wooden box. I lean over, and the cross I’m wearing dangles in front of my chin.
“You still have that?” he asks. He points to the gift his mother gave me the year I was supposed to make my First Communion. I sit up, and Gabe runs his finger along the chain.
“Here, give it to me,” he says.
I look at him, confused.
“You’re not even Catholic,” he says. “You don’t go to church. Why do you want a cross?”
I don’t tell him that I still talk to God, that I hold the cross in my fingers when I pray. Gabe would tell me that I had forsaken God and that there’s no way God would listen to the prayers of someone who had walked out on him. Suddenly, I feel like a fraud, like I’m pretending. Or, worse, like I’m wearing something that doesn’t belong to me.
I take the cross off and hand it to Gabe. He refastens the chain and hangs it on a nail on the wall. The cross falls onto the breasts of a woman. Gabe laughs.
I smile. Not because of the woman, but because Gabe has shown me this house. Something of mine is on the wall. I belong.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I’m not sure why I woke up with such clarity today But seeing Bernadette has somehow made me see my own life more clearly. I can’t believe that I’ve been feeling sorry for myself all these years with my father off doing whatever he pleases. I bet Bernadette would give anything for her father to get the hell out of there. Gabe must have seemed like a slice of heaven to Bernadette. Who wouldn’t rather be in the arms of someone like Gabe than listening to a drunken father in a cellar hole? On the other hand, does she deserve Gabe’s on-again, off-again attention?
Or do I deserve Benny’s on-again, off-again attention?
I get myself a bowl of cereal and turn on Days of Our Lives. Julie was ready to divorce Bob for Doug, but now she’s pregnant with Bob’s child. So Doug, wanting what’s best for everyone, lies to her and tells her that he doesn’t love her after all. Watching makes me feel more frustrated. Why does everything have to be so complicated?
I flick off the TV and run around the house like a madwoman, picking up the clutter, washing the scum off every surface. I keep singing the same song lyrics—“Wake up with no will to carry on, morning you’re not here, but never gone”—over and over while I scrub.
“Change the station, Joss,” my mother yells, like she always does when I have a tune stuck in my head.
I simply lower the volume.
“Oh, you’re an angel,” she says when she sees that I’ve cleaned up the house. “Shawnee is coming over to do a reading for Margo this afternoon.”
“Won’t Mike be furious?” I ask. Shawnee is a woman from my mother’s psychic group. She’s a medium, which means that when she reads tea leaves or tarot cards, she’s getting messages from the Great Goddess or the Universal Mind (it doesn’t really matter what you call it). Mike thinks that my mother’s psychic group is dangerous, that it could make Margo forget God’s intentions for women.
“I don’t think Mike’s in any position to judge right now. I think hell approve of anything that helps us find Gabe.”
“May I stay and watch?” I ask, and immediately regret it. If I had just hung around, my mother would have hardly given my presence any thought. But now that I’ve asked, she has to make a decision about what would be best.
“Don’t you have to work?” she asks as she pulls some half-burned candles out of a drawer and arranges them in lumps of clay around the edges of the coffee table.
“Today’s my day off. Linda is making Joe give me one day off a week.”
My mother shrugs. “Just don’t ask any questions. This is Margo’s reading.”
Ten minutes later Margo and Shawnee arrive simultaneously. Shawnee gives Margo a big hug in our living room and tells her that the whole world feels the pain of a lost child.
“Would anyone like tea?” my mother asks, lighting the candles. Both Shawnee and Margo say no, thank you. Good thing. I don’t think we have a tea bag in the house.
Shawnee takes off her man’s sweater and sets herself down in the center of the sofa. Margo goes around to the other side of the coffee table and kneels before it. I can tell by her eyes and the way that her hands are shaking that she’s nervous. Shawnee hands Margo the cards. “Shuffle the cards while thinking of your question,” she says.
Mom and I sit on the floor too, but farther away.
Margo hands the cards back to Shawnee, who draws nine cards and arranges them in rows of three on the table. As she turns them over she says, “My! So many cards from the Major Arcana! The cards have a lot to say to us today.” She points to the top three cards. “This is what has happened in the past,” she says.
I lean over and look at the three past cards. My mother doesn’t seem to mind—she’s doing the same thing. There is the Page of Pentacles, the Hermit, and the Five of Wands. “Ah,” says Shawnee. “Ah. We have a boy who has been assessing his skill, testing his power. He has been insisting on exercising his own will. However, as the Hermit shows us, power comes from shining the light on and accepting our contradictions. That is a hard task.”
Margo nods as if she knows exactly what Shawnee is talking about. But like me, I bet she’s eager to hear the present and the future.
“These three cards,” says Shawnee, pointing to the middle cards, “tell us about the present.” Again we lean over the cards. There are the Lovers, Temperance, and the Moon. I can’t wait to hear the story the pictures tell. She begins with the Moon.
“Ah, see how these dogs howl at the moon?” says Shawnee. “Gabe is dealing with overwhelming feelings.”
“Then he’s alive?” Margo asks, lifting herself off the floor.
Shawnee puts one finger up and closes her eyes. She appears to be listening, as if she and an imaginary friend are having a conversation.
“Yes,” says Shawnee. “I’m certain that he is alive.”
My mother jumps up and hugs Margo, then kneels, resting her hand on Margo’s knee, to listen to Shawnee’s reading. Margo keeps wiping tears from her eyes and taking deep breaths. About the present, Shawnee talks again of will, but this time of true will. She says true will is knowing who you really are and what you truly need. I remember realizing at Bernadette’s last night that I don’t know Gabe very well. Have I ever? Does Gabe know himself? Do I know myself? Probably not, I decide.
“In this position,” Shawnee tells us, “the Lovers card signifies that with acceptance and an understanding of our true self, love will come.”
“And the future?” asks my mother. “Do you have any way of being more specific, Shawnee, about the future?”
Shawnee doesn’t answer my mother, but runs her fingers along the bottom three cards. The King of Swords, the World, the Queen of Pentacles.
“Your son has a choice to make.” Shawnee points to the middle card, the World. “See this crown around the woman? It is the crown of death or the crown of victory. The choice will be a matter of
determining who is to be in control.”
“Like father, like son,” Margo says.
This startles me. I have never heard Margo talk about Mike and Gabe’s relationship before. I wonder, not for the first time, whether Margo knows more about why Gabe is missing than anyone is saying.
“What can I do?” Margo asks.
Again Shawnee closes her eyes and has a silent conversation.
“Nothing,” says Shawnee. “This is an internal journey.”
“Can you tell us anything about where Gabe is?” asks my mother. I can tell she’s disappointed—she was hoping for more concrete information.
This time Shawnee keeps her eyes closed for much longer. “He’s not in the mountains or in the city,” says Shawnee. “I feel him, he’s surrounded by water.” She opens her eyes and tells us, “Water symbolizes the soul.”
My mother takes Margo’s hands and tries to remind her of the good things we’ve heard. He’s alive. He’s on an internal journey—like a quest. All young men have to go on a quest of one kind or another.
“Look at Billy,” says Mom. That’s my father. “He’s still on his boyhood quest!”
Margo and my mother laugh. Shawnee signals for me to come sit beside her on the couch.
“You have a question you want to ask.” She hands me the cards. “Think of your question and then choose one card.”
“Do I have to say my question out loud?” I whisper.
She shakes her head no.
I want to ask about Benny, but I feel way too selfish. Certainly, if I ask my silly question while Gabe is missing, the gods will take Benny away from me for good.
Shawnee reads my mind. “It’s okay to ask your question,” she says. “Sometimes the answer to one question is the solution to many.”
So I silently ask God, Mother Goddess, the Universe, whomever, Will Benny come back to me? and pick a card.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I sit in the rear of the bus after school; Gabe sits in the front.
Once home, I grab a Scooter Pie and come running outside; Gabe stays inside. I make up a question regarding our homework and go knock on his door.
Margo opens the door wide and says, “We have one unhappy boy here.”
Gabe, who had been sitting on a radiator near the table, jumps up in fury and bangs upstairs. I saw him just long enough to notice that his eyes are red and his face is blotchy. He’s been crying.
“He better cut that out before Dad gets home,” says Mary.
“What a sissy-boy” Timmy says.
“Anna broke up with Gabe today, Jocelyn,” Margo says to me. “Why don’t you go upstairs and see if hell talk to you.”
I’m not sure I like this assignment. I have rarely been welcomed into Gabe’s room—a room he shares with both brothers and is at the same time rather barren and entirely male. I knock on the door.
“Go away!” Gabe shouts.
“Can I come in?” I ask. “I have a question about our book reports.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry about Anna,” I say. “I know you really like her.”
The door opens a crack, and Gabe turns to fling his body on his bed.
I guess this means I can enter after all. Not much in the room has changed. Two beds. One mattress on the floor. It’s easy to assume that one of the beds collapsed under horseplay and was eventually taken out for repair. Two bureaus. A carpet of T-shirts, pants, and socks. I immediately look to the spot on the wall where Anna’s letter hung the last time I was in this room. It’s held by tacks in each corner but torn in two.
“What did she say?” I try not to let the little trickle of pleasure I feel deep in my belly reach my face. Anna has broken up with Gabe, and I am his consoler. But it doesn’t matter what expression I have on my face because Gabe is looking up at the ceiling. He doesn’t even bother to turn toward me.
“Her parents found out about us and said that she’s too young to date.”
I speak the indisputable truth: “Then she still likes you.”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “I think she’s just using her parents as an excuse. I think she’s sick of me but doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.”
I see that this could be true too. Anna is known for her kindness. I cautiously sit on the bed across from Gabe’s. “Why would she be sick of you?”
Gabe sits up and shrugs. “I’m determined to make her like me again,” he says. “I can do it too.”
I think of the seminar my mother took one weekend: “The Power of the Mind.” She tells me that you can change your life just by focusing your thoughts. I wonder if Gabe somehow already knows about the power of the mind. He certainly seems able to make his life turn out okay.
Then I’m hit by a new thought: What if Gabe uses the power of the mind to make Anna like him again, and I use my thoughts to make Gabe like me? What would happen? I smile.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I believe you,” I say. “That’s why I’m smiling.”
TWENTY-NINE
Getting ready for work, I ponder the two things I’ve been told about Gabe and his disappearance. Bernadette says Gabe is “at confession.” Shawnee says Gabe is surrounded by water. Holy water? Gabe was last seen coming from the church; and Bernadette told me flat out to ask Father Warren where he is.
I decide to leave early and hang out at Ray’s Market at 6:30 a.m.—one half hour before going to the Grill—knowing that Father Warren picks up the Manchester Union Leader here every morning. I overheard him say so one day at breakfast.
“Hi, Father Warren,” I say as he comes out, and I just seem to be walking by.
“Look at this, Jocelyn,” he says. Again I get a small feeling of pleasure from the smile he directs my way. “The Red Sox won another game. Just might go all the way this year.”
“Does the paper say anything about Gabe O’Neil?” I ask.
“I haven’t seen any mention yet,” says Father Warren. “It seems that his disappearance has moved off the front page.”
“Not for me,” I say. The force of my voice startles me. What have I done so far but be a passive observer?
“Do you know Gabe well?” Father Warren asks as we both begin walking toward the Grill.
“We’ve known each other forever. He’s my next-door neighbor, and we work together at Joe’s, you know.”
Father Warren stops and turns toward me. “Did he tell you anything, Jocelyn, that might have indicated something was wrong? Did he seem upset by anything in the days before he left?”
I feel embarrassed every time someone asks me this type of question. Gabe and I did see each other at the Grill every weekend during the school year, and of course we ran into each other occasionally in the halls or in our yards. Yet I seem to know so little. But I try to think of the last time I actually had a chance to observe Gabe. It must have been the Sunday morning before the last days of school. The Grill stays open only a few hours on Sundays—to catch the church crowd. Sometimes Joe would ask us to work on Sundays, sometimes not. I’m trying to remember what it was like that morning when suddenly my brain snags on a memory.
“You know,” I say with sudden recollection, “Gabe did seem really moody the Sunday before he disappeared.”
“What do you mean ‘moody’?”
“He was quieter than usual. The regulars were kidding him, insinuating that he had ‘partied hearty’ the night before. Usually, Gabe just shrugs that off or plays along, but he didn’t that morning. He ignored the regulars like he couldn’t even hear them.”
“Did he say anything, anything at all, Jocelyn, that might have given you a clue as to why he was acting this way?” There is an intensity to Father’s voice that makes me realize he’s feeling as desperate as everyone else to find Gabe.
“If I remember anything, I’ll let someone know,” I say as we walk up the steps to the Grill.
“Come to me, Jocelyn,” says Father Warren. “If you think of anything at all, please come t
ell me.”
It isn’t until later, after I’ve swept the floor of the Grill, that I realize that I never asked Father Warren what he knew.
THIRTY
One late afternoon in August, Gabe brings me to the rickety house in the woods for a second visit. Although little has changed, I am no longer shocked by the interior decorating. Instead, I feel privileged to have an inside view. I glance at the posters more openly and notice that a new one, a picture of some rock stars, is hanging on the wall.
“Led Zeppelin,” Gabe tells me reverently. “They’re new.”
I nod in appreciation.
We hear someone calling Gabe’s name and rush outside. I know that Gabe’s brothers will kill him if they discover that he brought me here.
The voice grows louder. It is familiar, but I don’t recognize it as the voice of Matt or Timmy. Gabe calls back. I follow him away from the sight of the house, and we nearly collide into the caller. It’s Gabe’s cousin Jay.
“What are you doing here?” Gabe asks.
“My mother is at your mother’s dentist,” Jay says, as if that explains everything. And for the guys, it does.
I hate this news. I hate this arrival. I hate that Gabe and I no longer have a secret together. I hate that Jay will learn about the house too. I hate that he will expect me to back off and let the real games begin. I hate that Gabe will let it happen.
“So what are you guys doing down here?” Jay asks. He winks at Gabe.
I turn to Gabe to answer. He hesitates. Should he tell Jay about the house? He hasn’t made up his mind. I want to prevent it at any cost.
“God, it’s hot,” I say “Let’s go undie-dipping.”
Jay looks at Gabe as if to say, She’s not serious, is she?
“I’ll take my clothes off if you do,” Gabe says to me.
I look over at Gabe. We are comrades. We are protecting the house. I pull off my shorts and toss them on the bank.
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