I won’t be able to do anything about controlling what’s not in my hand.
Everybody says they saw Mark Hollywood on the Cape road hitchhiking. Strange to see him without a car. But when the school bus pulled up to give him a ride, he shook his head and wouldn’t get on.
Everybody says he was walking toward the piers.
It’s fall. I smelled it coming a little while ago, but it just appeared overnight in the air and trees. It’s past summer blanket weather, and I’ve been sleeping under Red’s old camp blanket, sleeping with blue beads in my hands.
And it’s harder than ever now ’cause I haven’t ever been without him in the fall. No season change, for that matter. Because he was here, alive, at the beginning of summer, I guess I thought if it stayed warm, I could keep him somehow.
I haven’t seen Red since the night on the widow’s walk. Maybe he smelled fall coming too.
Maybe it was time for him to lean and dance somewhere else.
27
Today I unlocked a sixth grader from a locker Pritchard Howard had put him in. It’s the first time that I feel like I’m not being led by a remote control in school. It’s the first day that I didn’t see the whole day in front of me. I almost feel like something could happen that I haven’t already been through.
I almost feel like I’m pulling myself out of a too-hot bath that makes you tired and sleepy, and almost pass out before you can get to a chair.
The kid is pretty shaky. Gia comes up to us and offers to walk the kid back to where he belongs. She smiles at me like an old friend. Then I remember, she was and probably still is.
Mona is standing in the door of the gym, looking.
She holds a pack of cigarettes in her hand. I an’t tell if she wants to smoke them or throw them away. Finally, though, she puts them in her sweatshirt pocket, turns around, sees me, and shrugs.
“Hey, beautiful thing.”
“Hey.”
“Where you going? Not to class, I hope?” she smiles.
I say, “Since I’m here …”
“Hell, beautiful thing, we can’t go by that. We can always change our minds and not be here. We could be anywhere else but here.”
“I guess so,” I say.
“I know so.”
I lean against a poster the cheerleaders have put up announcing a bake sale.
“I can stand it here. It’s not so bad, I guess.”
Mona smiles, looks around, and takes out a cigarette. She doesn’t light it, but her shoulders go down when it’s between her lips.
“I can’t stand it. I can’t stand expecting him to walk around a corner laughing. I can’t stand sitting in the lunchroom expecting him to walk up behind me and take some of my food. And I sure as hell can’t take the way everybody stops talking about whatever they’re talking about when I come around.”
Mona sits down in front of the gym and lights up, smiling at me. She’s still sitting there when I walk away and a teacher comes up and tells her to put it out, which of course, she doesn’t.
The pots on Mark’s front porch are all gone. He hates mums, so the porch is just lonely and colorless.
He sits on the steps, scratching underneath his cast with a long piece of bamboo.
It’s funny the happy look he gets on his face when he hits the itch. I sit down beside him, letting my book bag tumble down the stairs.
Mark looks surprised. “Books?”
“Yeah, books.”
“Damn. That’s a good thing, huh?”
“I guess,” I say.
Then I lean against Mark and he leans against me.
28
Mona’s gone.
Before she took off, she stopped by Caroline’s house. They hardly knew each other, but Caroline says she just opened the door and came right in.
They didn’t say anything to each other, then Caroline got up from the kitchen table and made some tea.
They still didn’t talk, just sipped tea and looked out the window, Caroline says.
Then Mona hugged her and left.
Now I’m here at Caroline’s, sitting where Mona sat. But I won’t be silent. It’s time for me to tell it.
All of it.
Red holds Mona in his arms but keeps on smiling at me.
Mark stands up on the hood of his car.
Red says, “Hey, man, that’s my car. You gonna dent it or what?”
“It’s yours when you do the deed, dude.”
“Are you gonna do it this time?” Mona says, then kisses Red until he laughs.
“Oh, yeah, the tide’s just right.”
I sit down on the edge of the pier and dangle my feet. I dream of jumping into the foamy white water and missing the rocks.
It can be done. People do it all the time, and Red and Mark made the deal a long time ago. Red would get the car if he jumped and swam out to the buoy.
No problem when the tide is right. No problem.
Mona holds Red’s boots and blue bead necklace.
It’s quiet on the pier when he dives off, and we all scream and laugh (even Mark) when he misses the rocks and starts swimming out to the buoy. When he makes it, Mona grabs me and I get excited about having the car. Mark shakes his head and rubs the hood of his car with his T-shirt.
He says, “Bye, baby,” to his car as we wait for Red to swim back and make the slow climb up the pier.
Halfway back to us, though, he disappears.
We never see him again. That easy. That fast. That gone.
I don’t tell Caroline how we had to hold Mark back from jumping into the rocks, or how I couldn’t move and thought I’d never stop screaming. I don’t tell her how Mona climbed down the pier and almost drowned herself. Looking for Red.
Caroline says, “Mona couldn’t cry on the boat. I remember. She held herself real close and tight, and the only people she’d even let get close to her were you and Mark.”
I say, “Uh-huh.”
Caroline pulls me close and says, “How long were you all going to suffer with this?”
I look over her shoulder through the big picture window out to the ocean.
“Forever,” I say. “Always and forever.”
After the all of it I leave Caroline, and I walk slowly down the drive and listen to the ocean pound against the shore. As always.
29
I had a dream last night that the old fisherman Red was standing underneath my window. He just stood and stared up at the house like he was waiting for somebody to come out.
A few minutes later Red was standing beside him, but they were both in the dark. There was no soft light cradling them and making me feel better.
There was no dancing or leaning against anything to make you think they were waiting. They just watched. Then after a while they walked away.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think it would always be me on the back of my brother’s bike. 1 can’t remember a time when I said, “Take me,” and he didn’t.
When I walk on the beach now, it’s bitter cold and I wear Red’s ski cap and his sunglasses. The gulls sweep down and call to one another. It can’t ever be that way for Red and me, but I’m going to stay here. I want to be here.
Not just because I can’t leave Red, but because I feel him here. I’m not saying I won’t leave the Cape; but I know I will always come back.
Always.
And then the light starts changing in the sky, and I see Cassie and Frank watching out the window for me. I wonder if they see me the way I see myself now.
Not the same. Never the same; but another way altogether.
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Looking for Red Page 6
