by Ron Koertge
I could see the question mark in her eyes. Then she began to laugh, hands on her knees, head back, roaring like a drunken lord. She looked great. Light was almost shooting off of her. I hadn’t heard her laugh like that since before Dad died.
“So you cried while you were talking to your mom?” Sully asked as I untaped the tractor picture from the inside of my locker.
“Yeah, a little.”
“God, that’s great. I think my parents would take my car away if I cried. My dad thinks tears cause cancer.” Sully shook his head in disbelief, then asked, “Did you tell your mom that you were going to tell Rachel?”
I shook my head.
“But you are.”
I nodded.
“Is today the day?”
“Yesterday was the day, but Rachel wasn’t at school.”
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“I saw her car in the lot this morning.”
“Look, I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
“My bill is in the mail.” Then Sully was off to class.
I didn’t feel like telling him I was having second and third thoughts. I knew what I hoped Rachel would say, but I also knew she might say anything. She never mentioned her mother’s name without lowering her voice reverently, and there was mine up there, shaking it for all the second-rate soccer players in the world.
Or I guess she shook it. I didn’t really know. And didn’t really want to know. Rachel would just have to make do without documentation.
I had, though, gone to the reference shelf for help: Stripper, for instance, really seemed crude — drums, bumps, grinds, long black gloves tossed out into the seething crowd. Dancer wasn’t entirely honest, was it? I mean, ballerinas were dancers. Ecdysiast was interesting: it would just make mom sound woozy, but then Rachel would ask what it meant and I’d be back to square one. Entertainer? Artiste? Performer? Chorus girl? Danseuse? My God, she would think I’d eaten a thesaurus.
Nothing would do but the truth. And what was that? She wasn’t a bartender or a waitress. She worked at a club called Ye Olde Burlesque and she was a dancer. Take it or leave it.
Then I spotted Rachel trudging down the hall toward me. I waved both hands; she blinked in acknowledgment. I was like a flag; she was like a penlight.
“Hi” I said eagerly. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said without looking up. Her backpack dangled off one shoulder. She shifted until it hung between us.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” I began, “something I should have told you a long time ago.”
Rachel sighed and looked at her shoes. Jesus, did she know already?
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Sure there is.”
“Then why ask if you already know?”
“I don’t know what, I just know —”
“I have to go to class.”
My stomach felt like a cold, wet sock.
“Are you sick?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
Her voice was absolutely flat. It all reminded me of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Had a pod grown overnight into this lifeless copy?
“Did you eat breakfast?”
She shook her head and began to drift away.
“Wait.” I started to dig in my bookbag. “This has a lot of potassium.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Sully as we stood in the parking lot after school. “She threw your banana at you?”
“Hit me right in the face.” I pointed to a nick on my cheekbone.
“Forever scarred by a tropical fruit.”
“Screw you — it hurt.”
“And you didn’t get to tell her, so that wasn’t it.”
“I think she knows, otherwise why… ?”
Sully shook his head. “Not likely. I think she would have just come out with it. No, it’s something else.”
“You should see the pictures of her mom: flowers, incense, it’s like a shrine out there.”
“How did she act again?”
“Listless. Pissed off. Surly.”
“Four more and we have all seven dwarfs.”
“Are you being a shithead on purpose, or is this your idea of concern?”
“Sorry. I just can’t take it seriously. Probably she flunked a test or argued with her dad or started her period. This can’t last.”
“Honest?”
“Trust me. I’m a trained observer of human nature.”
Mom was back on her regular schedule, but I still had enough time to drive out to my field for an hour or two. There’d been another thunderstorm, but the heavy rain hadn’t hurt anything. The stalks were completely resilient, getting back up again on their own as soon as the sun was out.
As I walked up and down the rows, stooping every now and then to wipe out a weed or to repair some tiny earthen dam, I think part of me envied the oats.
Whoever heard of a grain being depressed or lovelorn? They just grew up, pollinated one another, and that was that. But there were no ecstatic oats, either. No oat who dreamed of another oat like I did of Rachel.
I decided to hope that Sully was right.
But the next day was, if anything, worse. I found her leaning against the wall beside her locker like a sick animal. I knocked softly on the green metal door. When she looked up at me, her chin began to quiver.
“I called you last night.”
“I know,” she whispered.
I reached for her, then took my hand back. “Rachel, what’s wrong?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t tell me ‘Nothing.’ I’m not nuts, you know.”
“I didn’t say you were.” I could barely hear her.
“Then tell me.”
She slammed the heel of her right hand against her forehead, ground it down until it obliterated one eye, and finally choked out five words. “I have to move again.”
“Move? Move where?”
She shook her head.
“When?”
“My dad’s so mad.”
“At you? For what?”
“Bradleyville. They won’t rezone for him. He can’t build the Garden.”
“I thought you were never going to move again. I thought he said —”
“He did,” she cried. “He promised a hundred times. Then all of a sudden he says he’s changed his mind.” She snapped her fingers soundlessly. “Just like that.”
“Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t. Peggy didn’t. Her folks are God knows where. You could —”
“I’m not Peggy. I’m not anything like Peggy.” People in the hall turned to stare. “I love my father. We’ve been together since my mom died. We’re all we’ve got.”
That was Tuesday of the second or third grimmest week of my life. Wednesday was different, but no better. It was just my turn to lean against the lockers and to drag myself up and down the halls like I was pulling a barge. And it was Rachel’s turn to come up to me.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, Walker.”
She was dressed completely in white: a snow goddess. And cold like you wouldn’t believe. Even her breath felt cold.
“This is a painful situation for both of us, but there’s no reason we still can’t be friends.” Her eyes were blank; she was reading off some frozen tablet in her head. “Naturally we’ll want to see other people.”
“You’re nuts, Rachel. I don’t want to see other people, and I don’t think you do either.”
It seemed to shake her a little, but only a little. “We might date, then, on a casual basis, naturally: movies, concerts…”
I slammed the locker door. “Cut it out — now. I mean it.”
“I see,” she said, and her voice broke, “that you aren’t mature enough to —”
“I love you, Rachel, but I couldn’t tell you or wouldn’t or just didn’t know how, but now —”
“Don’t, Walker
, please…” The whole icy facade collapsed. “Don’t,” she moaned. “I can’t…”
I put my arms around her, and for a second it was like it had been when we were alone saying good night or under Kramer’s oak and our skin just seemed to dissolve and our cells and our blood ran together and we weren’t two people anymore, just one.
“Then?” asked Sully.
“You know that story in the Bible about Lot’s wife, who turns into a pillar of salt? Well, she was a noodle compared to Rachel.”
“She pushed you away?”
“Went stiff as a board.” I shifted the phone to my other ear. “What would you do if you were me?”
“Look, I’m supposed to pick up Peggy in a few minutes. Let’s all go get something to eat, and we’ll talk.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“God, this is serious.”
“Well, maybe I could eat a piece of butter lettuce.”
When I got in the car, Peggy patted my hand consolingly, but nobody said much on our way to the brand-new, retro A&W. Sully liked the A&W better than any other fast-food place in town because it had hamburgers named after the family unit — Juniorburger, Mommaburger, and Daddyburger — and the Freudian overtones amused him. The four of us — Rachel and Peggy, Sully and I — had laughed ourselves sick one night setting up housekeeping with our snacks, including the foreign neighbors, the Fry family from France. I guess it sounds stupid when I write it down, but it was funny that night and thinking about it again just made me feel so thick and heavy, it was like I was wearing lead underwear.
“I don’t want anything,” I said to the carhop.
“At least have a double Mommaburger,” Sully urged.
“Forget that. I can’t handle the one mother I’ve got.”
Sully ordered something for me and rolled up the window. Then he and Peggy turned to stare, both their chins resting on the spotless leather.
“How about not looking at me like I’m the last California condor, okay?”
“Sorry,” Peggy said. “You just seem so miserable.”
“Well, I am miserable.”
“She’s miserable, too.”
“How do you know that?”
“Walker, I talk to her every night on the phone.”
“Really?”
“Really. And you should tell her how you feel.”
“Well, I feel terrible.”
“You should tell her,” said Sully.
“I just miss her so much.”
“You should tell her,” Peggy urged.
“I sleep crappy.”
“Tell her,” they said in unison.
“And I think about her all the time.”
“Tell her,” they chanted.
“Even when I make a sandwich and I put on the bologna and the salami and the Braunschweiger, when I get to the part with the tomato I always see her little face right there on top.”
Sully and Peggy looked at each other. “Don’t tell her that,” they said.
Just then the carhop skated back and Sully handed out the food. He had ordered me a plain Juniorburger. I took off the sesame part of the bun, furtively wrote my name in ketchup and Rachel’s in mustard, then pressed the halves together tenderly.
“Eat,” said Peggy. “C’mon.”
I took a little bite. “God, I worry about her. I wonder if she’s okay, I wonder if she’s eating right, I wonder what she’s doing.” I put my hamburger back into its carton decorated with happy couples dining with both hands. “What if she starts going out with somebody else and likes it?”
“She won’t,” Peggy said. “We talked about that. She’s not like I used to be: break up with one on Friday and get three new ones by Saturday.”
Sully pitched forward into the steering wheel, wheezing and coughing. Peggy slapped him on the back until part of a French fry flew out and stuck to the speedometer.
“Nice shot,” she said. “Right at fifty-five. Just never go faster than that potato and you’ll be safe.”
“You know,” I said thoughtfully, “when Debbie moved away, I felt like this, but part of me was relieved, too. Isn’t that funny?”
“Why were you relieved?” asked Sully, nibbling carefully.
“I’m not sure. I liked Debbie. I sure liked kissing her. I didn’t want that part to ever stop.”
Peggy smiled at me over the back of her seat as her hand slipped over toward Sully’s.
“But honestly,” she said, “how much fun would it be if it didn’t? It’d be like being in tenth grade forever.”
“Look, what would you do about Rachel?”
She frowned as she thought. “Rachel’s a real girl,” she said deliberately. “I mean she cooks for her dad and takes care of his clothes and all that.”
“Right. So?”
“Well, you might have to get on your horse and go get her.”
“Now?”
“Finish your Juniorburger,” she said, trying to keep it light.
But she turned to Sully. “You tell him, Sully. You know more about this psychology stuff than I do.”
“No, I don’t,” he said evenly. “I’ve just read a lot of stupid books. You’re a hundred times smarter than I am.”
“God, Sully.” Peggy put one hand to her lips like she might cry. “That’s the nicest thing you ever said to me.”
“I’m going to miss you so much in September.”
“Jeez, me too.” Peggy suddenly sounded all broken up.
“I already miss Rachel,” I whined from the back seat.
Our hamburgers rose in unison and bumped into our quivering lips. We stared at each over the droopy buns.
Then the corner of Peggy’s mouth started to twitch, Sully’s eyes brightened, and we all started to laugh.
That was the best I’d felt in days.
Monday, though, school was just another trip to the Planet of Misery. And work was no better. Everywhere out there reminded me of Rachel — where we had eaten lunch or made love or taken a nap or talked about what we would do the next day, the next week and month, the next year.
Then on the second Saturday night after we’d broken up, I just picked up the phone, called Rachel — and got nothing. Not even the machine. Casually I hung up. Casually I went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water.
Self-deception is funny. Part of me was just soaking in the tub; part of me knew I was about to set out on a quest. Part of me was still very casual — shaving, checking myself out in the mirror, smoothing on after-shave; part of me was hurrying the razor, rejecting that shirt and those pants, slapping on the after-shave hard enough to snap the average person out of a little fit of hysteria.
I had the car because that guy Porter — who’d turned into pretty much of a steady boyfriend, I guess — had picked Mom up. Driving toward Rachel’s — still casual, right? One arm out the window, the side vent arranged so the wind would hopefully blow my hair with wild abandon instead of right in my eyes — carfuls of girls checked me out, giggling, waving, doing mysterious, semaphore things with their eyes.
Isn’t it funny? That’s what I’d always wanted: girls who were interested in me as me and not just some chubby kid who would give them directions to the nearest Snack Shack. And then I got what I wanted, and it didn’t mean a thing. Not that I wasn’t flattered or even, let’s face it, a little interested. But it didn’t really matter. Isn’t that amazing? If I live to be a hundred, there are some things I’m never going to understand.
Of course Rachel wasn’t home. Even the garage was empty, but that didn’t mean anything. She and her dad took separate cars to dinner all the time so she could leave while he wooed prospective clients with tales of paradise.
Since there was a good chance she was at Peggy’s, I headed that way, but nobody was home there, either. Or at Sully’s.
Okay, maybe she wasn’t alone. Maybe she was “seeing other people” for a hamburger, a trip around the skating rink, or a movie at the drive-in. Big deal. Very innocent.
At the Moonlight Rollerdrome I strolled in, waved to some people, leaned across the barrier, and scoped the place out. She could be holding hands with somebody while she skated. For safety’s sake. He could even have his arm around her waist. That’s how it was done on skates. It didn’t have to mean anything.
“Seen Rachel?” I asked a couple of girls skating backward, but they shook their heads.
At the A&W I resisted ordering absolutely everything and, when she wasn’t there and hadn’t been there, headed for Big Sky Drive-in.
“Seen Rachel?” I asked a guy I knew at the admission booth.
“Not yet, but I just came on.”
“Seen Rachel?” I asked some kids at the refreshment stand. “Seen Rachel?” I asked, standing outside under the moth-filled funnel of light from the projector.
Always the same answer: No, nope, uh-uh, not lately, not tonight. Then as I made one last sweep of the place, I spotted what could have been her in a Firebird with California plates. Had an old boyfriend shown up from the West Coast? They were outlined — the two of them — against the enormous screen, nose to nose, pucker to pucker like a Valentine silhouette. I studied them through the back window while I wondered what to do.
Now that it’s over, I can think of a dozen other plans, all of them better: I might have taken the flashlight out of the trunk and pretended to be an employee, or simply bought a box of popcorn and got close enough by merely acting lost.
Instead, I parked a couple of rows ahead of them, slithered out of the passenger’s side, and crept up to the Firebird’s grill on all fours. Then, like some dark moon rising, my head slowly emerged from behind the hood ornament.
Naturally the girl shrieked. Who could blame her? She was watching Aliens from Zoron and here comes this thing out of the front of the car.
But it wasn’t Rachel’s shriek, and by the time the guy even got the speaker off his window, I was back in the trusty Saturn, throwing gravel and heading west. Because it’d dawned on me where Rachel had gone. Where did she always go? Where, for that matter, did most kids go?
“Seen Rachel?” I asked the first bunch of girls I saw at Westgate, all of them dressed alike, all with their hair done the same, all angling left then right in unison like a school of pretty fish.
“Just Desserts,” they said.
Great! But what would I do when I found her, pretend I was just there for a triple-dip rocky road?
