A Face in Every Window

by Han Nolan

  I turned around to leave and found Bobbi standing behind me. I hadn't even heard her.

  "Hi," I said, and then added, "bye."

  "Yeah, good luck in your new house," she said, shaking her head so her hair fell back behind her shoulders. I had always had the feeling that she did that so people would notice her beautiful hair, and it was beautiful. It was honey colored, like clover honey, and it was long and straight and looked very heavy, as if she had tiny weights hanging from the ends. She liked to swish it and swing it and toss it behind her with her head or hands, whatever got her the best effect.

  I looked away, uninterested in her charms. Neither one of us said anything, and then I said, "Well, gotta go."

  I passed her and headed for the truck. She said to my back, "You never liked me, did you?"

  I stopped walking and turned around. "You never gave me a reason to, Polanski."

  "Seeley likes me. You didn't know that, did you? We talk sometimes." She flicked her hair back again and adjusted the sling around her arm.

  "I'm not Seeley," I said, catching sight of a bruise on her wrist "So what happened to your arm?"

  She laughed. "Fell. What else?"

  "I can imagine what else," I said.

  Bobbi studied the sling and I saw her expression change, turning inward, shutting down, and I flinched as if I'd heard the echoing slam of a dungeon door. I'd never seen a face change so suddenly. One second she was laughing at herself and the next she was gone—just gone. Then she became all smiles again, her dimples showing—more charm. "My dad rigged up this sling. Pretty nice, huh? Better than you'd get at the doctor's. Dr. Morris even said it was good work. He said Dad tied it just the right height for my arm."

  Someone honked the horn and I looked back toward the house a second, then at Bobbi. "See you—sometime—then," I said, backing away.

  She held out her hand for me to shake. "I just wanted us to part friends."

  I stopped and crossed my arms in front of me. "Why?"

  "Come on, O'Brien, we grew up together, that's all. No ulterior motive."

  I leaned forward and shook her hand. It felt cold and dry and firm.

  The horn sounded again and she squeezed my hand before we both let go. I stood there for a moment, puzzling over her gesture, but then the horn blasted three more times and I took off.

  ***

  AT THE NEW house we discovered that Mrs. Levi had left us a heavy-duty riding mower, which Pap wanted to ride right away. He was supposed to be unpacking all his junk from our old garage into our new one, but he couldn't stop fooling around with the mower.

  I got tired of arguing with him and went inside to unload some other boxes, ones without a lot of broken junk in them.

  Mam told me to help Larry in the parlor. I didn't know which room she was calling the parlor, so I hunted for Larry and found him in the room with the piano. It was an old upright, taller than I and heavy looking. Mrs. Levi had said it was a Victorian piano. Someone had painted it a wine color. I went over and played a few notes. It sounded bad, as if I were playing it underwater.

  Larry came up behind me and touched some of the lower notes. He had long fingers and the tips of them bent way back when he pressed a key.

  "Maybe timing it will help," he said, trying a scale.

  "Yeah', maybe." I went over to one of the boxes and ripped the tape off the top.

  "You know, I had this thought," Larry said, turning to face me. "We ought to get Pap to try this thing out Who knows, he might turn out to be one of those idiot savants. You know, one of those people who have this one stroke of genius in them and then the rest of them is just—well—Anyway, I saw on TV this guy who could play the piano like Liberace, and he was retarded and blind but he had this one God-given gift, to play the piano. So maybe..."

  I threw down the blanket I had pulled out of the box. "What do you think? You think you just discovered retarded or something? You think Pap's some new discovery? Don't you think Grandma Mary tried all those things long ago? He's forty-two years old. Don't you think Pap's already had a million tests? Pap is Pap, okay? You're not going to discover some hidden genius, or some great math skill, or ... or ... artistic ability. Can't you just let Pap be Pap?"

  "Can't you?" Larry said, standing with his back to the piano, blinking at me.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, but Larry didn't answer. He turned around and played "Three Blind Mice" with one finger. I went back to unpacking, tossing the stuff on the floor, and then Larry stopped in the middle of his tune and said, "Sorry, JP, you're right. I've never paid much attention to Pap before. Okay? But I like him." He turned and came over to the box where I stood and pulled out a picture of me, Pap, and Grandma Mary dressed up for my first communion. He studied it.

  "I used to kind of pick on Pap," he said, setting the picture down on a side table that wobbled on the uneven floorboards. "Well, 'pick on' maybe isn't the right phrase. I used to like to fool him. Get him to believe things. I told him once that that set you've got, the Mary and Joseph and Jesus, the Nativity, came alive at night when we went to sleep. I told him we could never see it because they waited until everyone was asleep. He believed me."

  "'Course he did."

  "Okay, I was stupid. Believe me, I've been paid back plenty in my life. Anyway, like I said, I like Pap. I'm not going to hurt him, if that's what you're thinking. I'm not going to give him drugs or anything."

  I tossed the emptied box behind me and tore open the next one, happy to have something to rip into. "Did Mam tell you I thought that? Is she telling you everything I say?"

  "I lied to you about selling drugs," he said, not answering me. He flipped his hair back off his shoulders and leaned over the box with me. He helped me to dislodge a rolled-up rug set in at an angle, pulling up on his end while I pulled on the other.

  "I never sold, I just used, and most of the time I was too poor to even use. I came home because I got tired of living on the streets. I was a failure even at drug abuse."

  We dropped the rug on the floor and unrolled it with our feet, kicking and stamping on it to flatten out the edges.

  "I'm telling you this to make peace. I need a break, okay? Your mother's giving it to me. I won't mess up."

  We both stared down at the rug, a braided coil of blues and browns.

  "I need this family," Larry said, pointing his booted foot and smoothing down a section of the rug that had bubbled up.

  I lifted my head. "We're not your family," I said. I left him then, returning to Pap in the garage.

  The unpacking dragged on. Mam only got the one day off from her job, so we worked all day and into the night. The next morning Mam took Pap to work with her, driving the long miles into Philadelphia in Larry's van, and left Larry and me alone to finish unpacking.

  I had saved my room for last. I wanted it to be just right I wanted everything to have its own place, everything to be in order. I'd had first pick of the bedroom I wanted, not counting the one Mam and Pap chose. I'd picked one of the two attic rooms and prayed Larry wouldn't pick the other. I wanted to be as far away from everyone as I could get.

  Mam had seemed disappointed. "I would think after spending your life out on that porch you'd want a real room, not some hot attic."

  "It is a real room," I said, "and it has a fan and so does the room at the other end of the hall. I can set it up so one fan is drawing air from the other and it'll be plenty cool. Anyway, I like it up there."

  Mam let me have the attic, and Larry, who said he had plans to fix up the cabin in the woods for his place, chose a large square room right next to Mam and Pap's.

  My room had a slanting ceiling with a stone chimney sticking up through the center of it, dividing my sleeping area from my work area. Mrs. Levi had left behind two desks and three bookshelves. I got rid of the wobbliest desk and kept the other and the three shelves. I had plenty of books, my microscope, which Pap didn't break after all, a globe on a stand, my chess set, a rock collection, a small Indian arro
whead and artifact collection, and a bunch of medals and certificates I had won in school. I had parts of old science fair projects collected in a box and a topographical map of the creek and our old neighborhood that I taped to the wall. I fixed it so one side of my room looked just like a library, dark and hidden from view when I sat on my bed on the other side.

  The house was the kind of place I figured would have secret passages, and although I had outgrown all the Hardy Boys stuff years earlier, I couldn't help but look around in closets and behind pieces of furniture, knocking on walls for a secret door.

  I came backing out of one of the closets downstairs, one with built-in shelves that had the smell of a used fireplace in it, when I heard someone else knocking.

  I decided it was Larry making fun of me and I called out to him. He came to the top of the stairs and yelled down to me, "What did you say?"

  I stood at the bottom of the steps, about to answer him, then I heard the knock again.

  Larry hung over the banister. "Go see who's at the door."

  I saluted him and went to the door and opened it.

  Bobbi Polanski stood before me on the porch, with one arm still in the sling and the other holding a grocery bag full of clothes.

  "I lied," she said, setting her bag down.

  "Huh?"

  "When I said I wanted us to part friends. I did have an ulterior motive. I'm moving in."

  "Huh?" I said again.

  Larry trotted down the stairs and opened the door wider.

  "Bobbi? Are you okay?"

  "Sure," she said, brushing past me and stepping into the house.

  "Just come on in, why don't you," I said.

  "Thanks. Get my sack, will you, JP?"

  I left it on the porch and kept the door open.

  Bobbi took a few more steps in and looked around at the living and dining rooms, neither one with any furniture in it yet, and then walked to the stairs and craned her neck to see up the stairwell. She had on a pair of low-cut jeans and a T-shirt that hovered just above her belly button. She sank her hand into her back pocket, turned around, and walked back toward us. She had a firm, square-shouldered, narrow-hipped body, and her walk was more of a stride, heavy on the heels. I'd always had the feeling that she'd make a great prison warden.

  Bobbi looked at Larry. "Six bedrooms, right?"

  "Yeah, uh, three unoccupied."

  She looked at us both and grinned. "Nice place." She nodded. "Yeah, I think I'll like it here just fine."

  "Not if I can help it, Polanski," I said. "What makes you think you can just shove your way into my house, anyway?"

  Bobbi took her hand out of her pocket and set it on her hip. "I don't recall the newspapers saying your name was on the winning essay. Seems to me they said a Mrs. Erin O'Brien won this house."

  I gripped the doorknob and wished it were her neck "Nobody here likes you, Polanski, so why don't you just pick up your little shopping bag and get out."

  Before Bobbi could snarl out her next retort, Larry's van rattled and quivered into the driveway and Mam and Pap hopped out.

  "I got a job!" Pap called out. "I got a job. My first real-time job!" He looked up at me. "Going to the center is a job, isn't it, JP?"

  I looked at Mam, but Mam wouldn't meet my eyes. She knew I'd be upset about Pap taking classes with her. Grandma Mary didn't want Pap taking those horticultural therapy classes down at the center where Mam taught, even if they were meant for people like Pap.

  "He'd pick up nasty habits being around all those other brain-damaged people," Grandma Mary had said. "He'd start picking his nose in public or touching his privates, and we can't have that, you know. Anyway, they're not going to teach anything I couldn't teach him me own self, right here in me own home."

  But, of course, Dr. Mike had to interfere, reminding Mam that Grandma Mary was dead now and that she needed to consider what was best for Pap and that Pap needed someplace to go during the day. He thought Pap really could get a job, someday, just as Larry had wanted Pap to learn the piano. Mam agreed, of course, and so it would be their own fault when Pap went along to the grocery store one day and decided to pull his pants down because he'd seen someone in his class doing it.

  I was so upset just picturing the whole idea, I'd forgotten that Bobbi was with us. Pap came toward me with his arms out, wanting to hug me, and Bobbi stepped forward in front of me and hugged him first.

  "Hey! It's Bobbi come to stay!" Pap said.

  I glanced at Mam and I could tell she was surprised to see Bobbi, but she was also delighted.

  Pap dapped and hugged me and Larry, then sat down in the rocker and began a rapid rocking, his fingers twitching on the armrests.

  Bobbi walked over to Mam, who stood beaming at the top of the porch steps, and the two of them hugged. "I'm glad you changed your mind," Mam said, and then I knew that Bobbi had been invited. She had been invited behind my back, just as Larry had. Everything went on behind my back, mine and Grandma Mary's—a total betrayal.

  "She can help me put up the Nativity," Pap said, rocking his chair hard enough to hit the wall behind him. "You know where we're going to put it?"

  Bobbi turned from Mam, wiping at her eyes and said, "No, where?"

  "Right above where you're standin' right now on this porch, is where. And it's flat up there so they won't fall off and get hurt And you can be a Three Wise Man if you want to."

  Bobbi nodded "I can't wait," she said.

  Mam twisted around, looking back at the driveway.

  "Bobbi, how did you get here? I don't see a car."

  Bobbi shrugged. "Oh, I just hitched a couple of rides." She set her gaze on me and added, "Thanks for inviting me to stay, Mrs. O'Brien."

  "Well, we're glad to have you. There's plenty of room here."

  Pap jumped up from his seat and hugged Bobbi again, squeezing her tight "Isn't this so fun?"

  Mam answered him. "We need to celebrate all this good news. Come on," she said to Bobbi, "let's pick out a bedroom for you, and then we can all go down to the kitchen and make ourselves a celebration dinner."

  We all paraded back into the house, with Pap grabbing up Bobbi's bag and swinging it up onto his head.

  "Hey," he said, "this isn't so heavy as the boxes we've been moving."

  I entered the house last, kicking the front door shut behind me. The four of them continued up the stairs and I stayed behind watching them—this new thing my family had become, this monstrous entity with eight eyes and eight arms and legs, this oddball creature with one giant mouth that had devoured my real family.

  Chapter Ten

  WE ALL SPENT the next several weeks adjusting to our new lives. Everything was new: home, family, school, jobs.

  I was the only one, however, who found the transition difficult. I felt as if I were drowning in a swirling pool of chaos. In school I stuck with what I did best, classes and homework. At home, though, life was a party that never ended, and Mam was the one keeping the party going. At first she just stayed up late talking with Larry and Bobbi, then she went out on more dates with Dr. Mike, coming in at all hours, and finally she created what she called all-night fun-a-thons. Mam, Pap, Larry, and Bobbi would dance to loud music all over the house, the way Mam used to do with Pap, or the group would read plays to one another, acting the parts, or watch movies, or play basketball. The next morning Mam would have to drag herself out of bed, gulp down several mugs of coffee, and set out for work exhausted before the day had even begun.

  Then after one weekend when all she could do was sleep, I decided we needed some order around the place, and at my urging, Mam assigned us all jobs to do around the house. Mam gave me the job of head yardman, and I not only had Pap bugging me for rides on the mower, which I had to admit were fun the first few times, but I also had Larry telling me how to mow.

  "If you mow it first one direction this week and then the other direction the next, you get a better cut It's better for the grass," he said to me, hollering out the kitchen window. Making d
inner was his job.

  "You want to mow the lawn, be my guest," I hollered back. "Otherwise, lay off!"

  That was Larry's and my new relationship. He kept trying to play big brother and because I didn't want him to, didn't want him to be any kind of brother, I fought with him, and in the process acted just like a younger brother. I tried to avoid playing this role, but the only way I could was to keep away from him and that seemed next to impossible. Somehow, wherever I went, Larry appeared—in the kitchen, in the living room, in the woods, at the cabin, out in the garage. He never sat still. I got so frustrated funning smack into him every time I went out of my way to avoid him that I finally asked him if he were following me.

  "No, you just happen to be where I need to go," he said.

  "How could you need to go all over the house? You're everywhere. Can't you ever just sit?"

  Larry sneered at me. "No, I guess not. Looks like you'll just have to live with it"

  I also had to live with Larry's smoking. He had a cigarette bobbing between his lips all the time, while he talked, while he read, while he walked from place to place, even while he cooked. I'd watch him stirring some vegetarian glop in a bowl, or chopping vegetables, and he'd hold the cigarette in his mouth the whole time, letting the ash get longer and longer until I could see it about to drop off into the food, and I'd yell at him.

  Larry would always say he was just about to deal with it, but I wondered if he just let the ash fall on the food and stirred it in with the rest of the mess when I wasn't there. How would we know the difference?

  Larry kept a camera in the kitchen and took pictures of his creations, sometimes artistically arranging fresh vegetables around the dish to create a still life. At other times he'd ask me or Bobbi to hold up the dish and look as if we couldn't wait to eat it This was true acting on our part. We knew that beneath the colorful beans and vegetables hid something dark and unidentifiable.

  "Hey, it's good for you," Larry would say every time one of us rolled our eyes at the food he'd placed in, the middle of the table. "It'll put hair on your chest, color in your cheeks, and pep in your step."