One of Enrique’s new friends was an eighth-grade girl named Annie Schiff. A big girl, taller than any of the boys, she was the best long-jumper and an important leg in the relay race. With only two events she was able to spend a good amount of time lounging at the center of the field before Mrs. Wheeler squealed for her, “An-nieeeeee! Long jump!” Mrs. Wheeler was harder on her than she was on the other girls, perhaps because Annie, who braided her red hair into pigtails for practice, was the one who most resembled Mrs. Wheeler. Tommy once said, when Mrs. Wheeler approached with Annie at her side, “Make way for the East German Olympic team.”
When Annie was called away, her boobs often became the subject of discussion among the lounging team-members. They were far and away the biggest boobs in junior high and rivaled many of those in high school. Enrique, Tommy, and the other kids were never cruel, merely observant—making dry guesses as to her bra size and speaking with a distanced kind of respect, as if Annie had done something revolutionary in growing them so big so early. By the way Annie carried herself, one could see that she considered her breasts both precious and embarrassing. She always crossed her arms over them when she was standing alone on the field, up until that moment right before she would break out in a run and take flight over the sandpit. She seemed to have resigned herself to letting them go their own way when she was in action. Having obviously confined them in the strongest bra she could find, what more could she do?
Enrique had taken on the role of a needling younger brother with Annie. One afternoon he furtively drew a smiley face on the rubber tip of her sneaker. When she noticed, she seemed irked for only a moment before she twisted her foot around to better see the face and said, “Cute.” By the end of practice that day, he had nearly covered the exposed white rubber of her sneakers with different faces.
But on the afternoon in question, Enrique went too far. The girls were practicing the relay race. Annie stood in her spot, halfway around the track, arms folded over her breasts. Once the race was underway, though, she unshielded herself and took her stance: one hand fisted and raised to run, the other open and waiting for the baton. Enrique happened to be standing near the track and, a few seconds before the baton was passed to Annie, saw an opportunity and took it without fully thinking it through. He quickly darted in, undid Annie’s bra, and darted out. Annie looked down at herself, and appeared, by the way her eyes receded into her head, to register what had happened the very moment the baton hit her hand. She took a few awkward steps, then lifted her shoulder, nudging one breast up with her arm.
Mrs. Wheeler, who was standing halfway down the track, hadn’t seen what happened. “Annie! Go!” she shrieked.
Annie went. Slowly at first, then more quickly she ran, trying to manage her flying breasts, which, unleashed, seemed much bigger. She was like someone who had stolen the contents of a fruit cart, hidden it in her shirt, and was attempting to escape. “What’s wrong with you? Hustle!” Mrs. Wheeler cried.
A jolt of unbearable remorse struck Enrique. To watch Annie now was like seeing a horse fall in battle in an old western—heartbreaking, that this gentle thing was subjected to such vain abuse. This remorse, though, was followed almost immediately by anger. It was just a joke. It isn’t my fault her boobs are so big.
Annie stumbled when she handed off the baton. Then she gathered herself and ran, crying, under the bleachers toward the locker room.
Enrique glanced at the others lounging in the center of the field. They all had seen. Slowly, with a casual air, he took the path Annie had, under the bleachers toward the gym. Maybe he could apologize to her and make it seem like some sort of mistake. But he was glad when he got to the boys’ locker room without having encountered her. He changed clothes and rode his bike home.
Between classes the next day, Tommy walked up to Enrique in the hall. With a steadied voice, as if he had been nominated ambassador from the track-and-field kids, he said, “Enrique, what you did to Annie yesterday was really mean.”
Enrique’s heart pounded and his face burned. “It was a joke.”
Tommy squinted. “It wasn’t funny. She’s still upset about it. You should apologize.”
Enrique allowed silent laughter to percolate in him, bouncing shoulders up and down, a gesture he had learned from Jay. Then he said, “C’mon, Tommy. What’s the big deal?”
It worked. Tommy hesitated.
“Don’t be a priss,” continued Enrique. “What? Are you afraid of seeing her boobs? Do they scare you?”
A shadow of fear passed over Tommy’s face, a fear Enrique understood because he had felt it so many times himself: that what was being implied, if named, would stick.
“You’re a jerk,” Tommy said. He spun on a heel and walked away.
At least Enrique didn’t enjoy it. He hated it, regretted it, was ashamed of it. This difference between himself and Pete Randolph was the only solace Enrique could take as he rode his bike home that afternoon—this, and the fact that the “trial period” had not yet ended, and he needn’t go back.
WANDA RETURNED TO Portland for a five-day stretch. The awkward giddiness had worn off, and there was a solemn sense of duty to her early-morning ritual. Melissa’s parents came for the weekend and, at dinner, politely skirted Wanda’s role in the household. Wanda excused herself early, claiming that she needed fresh air. There was the rich smell of moss in the woods, and the spongy soil sucked at Wanda’s sneakers. She chastised herself as she walked for not making more of an effort with the grandparents.
But her conscience was eased the next night, when Melissa returned from work, poured herself a whiskey, and made a ringing announcement to her house: “Thank God they’re gone!”
This seemed to restore humor and romance to the little family, and before dinner they took the dogs for a long walk. They used the trail, Wanda noticed, that Melissa had taken that first evening, all those months ago. The hues of the forest had deepened since then, and there were birdsongs echoing through the pines. When they reached the open, boulder-strewn slope, Wanda remembered Melissa’s command and kept her eyes on the trail. Only when they reached the top of the clearing did she turn.
The gorge had transformed. The forested slopes had changed color from cool granite to glowing emerald. Everywhere, new leaves caught the light, and all along the great corridor—waterfalls. Some dropped from the plateau’s edge like strands of silk while others charged, white and frothy, down rocky ravines. Their distant rumble, along with the whistling breeze, made Wanda feel like a speck lodged between the fingers of a living, breathing giant’s cupped hand.
Wanda couldn’t help but feel that somehow it was the waterfalls that did the trick—the unfreezing of the earth—when, a week later, the plus-sign bloomed on the stick test like a tiny blue flower.
SALT LAKE CITY was Boise’s big brother. This thought always struck Chuck when his father-in-law picked him up at the airport and they drove from the white-encrusted banks of the lake into town. It was bigger and busier than Boise, the mountains that rose beyond it were taller and more majestic, and the gothic spires of Temple Square—which seemed to have been plucked from Europe or some other place with history and plopped down in this desert valley—made the Boise Temple look like a fast-food restaurant.
“Thank you for coming, Chuck,” Grandpa Nelson said as he turned onto the freeway. “I know that Sandra had asked you not to. But sometimes illness clouds our vision and we don’t see what’s best for us. I’m sure you’ll be a comfort to her.”
“When it comes to Sandra,” Chuck said curtly, “I do what Abby says.” This close to the end, it seemed pointless to pretend.
“Don’t be bitter, Chuck,” Grandpa Nelson said. “We’ve had our differences over the years, but it’s time to put that behind us.”
Grandpa Nelson, and the whole Nelson clan, really, had made little secret of the fact that they found Chuck to be a disappointment again and again. He had taken Sandra away, to live in Idaho. He had given her only one child. He had become what
he and Sandra called “ill” but what seemed more like mere laziness. And he had broken with the church. Never mind that this last and most important failing had been Sandra’s decision. “Doesn’t it all seem implausible to you, Chuck?” she had said on the way home from the ward house one Sunday, seven years ago. “Joseph Smith and Moroni. All this money we give, and the little old ladies are still sniffing for coffee on my breath.”
“Not in front of Abby, dear,” Chuck had whispered.
“Why not? She’s old enough to think for herself.”
Abby, visible in the rearview mirror, had sat blinking like a dazed little bird. Poor girl. That nose would keep the boys away.
“I’m not saying we should break with the church,” Sandra had continued, taking Chuck’s hand. “I’m just saying, next Sunday maybe we could catch up on some gardening.”
He had admired her then for her independent thinking. She had still been his tall, sleek, urbane wife. When had she turned on him?
“Abby’s been such a godsend,” Grandpa Nelson said, apparently wishing to return to common ground. “She’s the type who sees what’s in front of her and does what needs to be done.”
“Always has been,” Chuck offered.
Grandpa Nelson gave a great sigh. “Gets that from you,” he said.
They reached the house and Grandpa Nelson stopped Chuck from leaving the car. “Just one second, Chuck. Like I said, we haven’t seen eye-to-eye on everything over the years. But you’re here now, and for that I’d like to thank you . . . son.”
Fuck you, old man. “Thanks for saying that. That means a lot.”
When Sandra was gone, there would be no reason ever to see this man again.
Inside, Grandma Nelson made a tamping-down motion with her hands. “She’s resting. They had a bad night.”
Chuck went to the bedroom door and quietly pushed it open. Abby had her mother’s hand in a large plastic bowl and was soaking the fingernails in water. She took the hand out and laid it on a folded towel in her lap. With a Q-Tip she worked delicately and intricately to clean along the cuticle. Here was proof of what her grandfather had just said: who else but Abby would know the perfect act for this moment, something so gentle, soothing, and banal as doing her mother’s fingernails? He wanted to rush to Abby, but that would have woken Sandra.
Abby looked up with her wonderful, deep, sad eyes. She drew her lips tight. It wasn’t a smile, it was closer to a frown, in fact, but it spoke much more: everything she had gone through, how glad she was to see him, how hard this was going to be.
Lodged in the corner of the easy chair, Sandra looked completely different from the way she had the last time Chuck saw her. Free of makeup, her face was gray and withered. She no longer wore a wig, and in the weeks since they had deemed her “beyond” chemotherapy (as if she had somehow graduated), her hair had grown back, an inch of silver straw, tousled like a young boy’s. What a funny little haircut, like a pixie. It made Chuck smile. Maybe he breathed an audible laugh, because Sandra shifted. She opened her eyes and lifted herself in her seat. Then she saw Chuck, and everything in her face twisted into an awful look of dismay. She shook her head, no . . . no . . . , and took her dripping hand back from Abby. She covered her eyes and leaned forward as if to bury her face in the mounds of blankets.
Chuck retreated, gently pushed away Grandma Nelson, who tried to embrace him, and went upstairs.
Abby called Grandma Nelson to sit with Sandra. She found her father with one index finger hooked into the crease between his nose and mouth, the other fingers splayed like bars over his lips. His eyes were wide, studying a tree out the window as if they had never seen one before. Abby pulled a chair up beside him and draped her arm over his shoulders.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he whispered.
“Daddy,” Abby said, “she wants you here. No, she does. She asked me to have you come. She’d never admit it, she’s too proud, but she changed her mind.”
“Really?” Chuck said.
Abby bit her lip and nodded.
This was the first lie in what would become, for Abby, a season of lies:
Yes, she is in a better place now, isn’t she?
I feel like she’s watching us right now.
Abby would be surprised how, after the first few, they would roll off her tongue fluently, as if she believed them. It would be the only way to take care of the mourners and keep them at arm’s length.
She always cherished your friendship.
At least we know we’ll see her again one day.
Oh, me? I’m doing all right.
Step Six:
Results
Chapter 21
May was a verdant flash in Idaho’s yellow year. For a week or two the sagebrush and its big, silver-blue brother the Russian olive flushed green before returning to their metallic hues. The cheat grass did the same, and the hillsides were sprinkled with candy-colored wildflowers. The scraggly wild rosebushes produced some tightly rolled buds among the thorns. In town, the air carried the syrupy smells of lilac, honeysuckle, and wisteria, and the birds, who had all returned, chattered in the trees.
The theme of Eula High’s senior prom, chosen after weeks of debate, was Miami Vice. The decorating committee borrowed nearly every tropical houseplant and lawn flamingo in Eula and rented several large inflatable palm trees from a party supplier. An announcement in the Eula High Gazette showed a cut-out Don Johnson reminding everyone that “Pastels are Mandatory!!” As soon as Ron’s Formal Wear on the boulevard ran out of tuxedos in aqua, peach, and lavender, Eula High seniors headed to Boise.
Jay found his periwinkle-blue tux in Chandler. It was a little short in the legs, but otherwise, he thought as he watched himself in the bathroom mirror tug at the lapels and jut out his chin, it looked pretty good. So did his hair, which he had blown from its drooping waves into a fluffy, middle-parted pyramid. He went to the kitchen and from the refrigerator took the plastic box, which looked like it was made to hold a cake but instead held a massive wrist corsage that wobbled as if it were alive. It was a thicket of Madagascan jasmine and curling fronds topped by a single obscenely splayed, speckled-tongued orchid. It had cost $20 at Eula Floral.
Lina walked into the living room and gasped. “Look at you! Let me take your picture.”
“Come on, Lina,” Jay groaned.
“Just one second,” she yelled, running back into her room. “Where’s the Polaroid?”
“I’m going to be late,” he said. But he wasn’t.
“I’ve got it!” Lina said, returning with the black plastic cube with its red button. She popped it open, squeezed the button, and with an irritated hum the camera spat the picture out. “Another one outside,” Lina said, following Jay out toward the car. “Smile this time.”
Jay set the box on the roof of the Maverick. He gave his lapels a final tug, then gave Lina the smile he had practiced in the bathroom mirror minutes earlier—practiced it for the portrait that he planned to have taken later tonight, in which he and Liz would stand together like newlyweds.
The smile hit Lina like a fist. She steadied herself and took the picture. Jay had never smiled brightly like that for her before; she hadn’t known he could.
Jay came over to watch as the white square slowly began to show a shadow that then became him, in dazzling blue, and his gray car. The lane behind him was lined with trailers, white shoeboxes with colorful trim; above them the pale blue sky showed three vertical wisps of clouds, like brushstrokes. “Looks good. Gotta go.” As if doing it quickly would keep it from going on record, Jay tossed an arm around Lina and buried a kiss in her wiry, graying hair. She froze, shocked again but in a different way.
As Jay walked to his car, he caught Gene next door watching him from a window that had been propped open with a soup can. Jay gaped his mouth and bugged his eyes, aping Gene’s expression, which sent the little troll back into the darkness.
Lina stood there for a long time listening to the chirrup of crickets and the hum of
cars on the boulevard and the occasional hysterical cry of the killdeer that made her nest in the gravel back by the chain-link fence. Then all this was interrupted by the rustle and snap of someone crossing the weeded lot, and Lina wiped her eyes.
“Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” Connie said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you all right, Lina?”
“Yeah. Jay just left to the prom. He looked so handsome and grown-up it made me cry, is all.”
Connie smiled. She held her hands solemnly against the front of her skirt, like a member of a choir. “I’ve been meaning to ask a favor of you. I can’t believe I’ve left it so long.”
“What is it?”
“I have to go away for a few days. It’s family business in Kansas City. I can’t take Gene, of course, because of school. I’ve talked it over with him, and he seems to think he’s old enough to stay in the house by himself. He can get himself breakfast and lunch, but dinner . . . Could I send him over to your house for dinner for the next few nights?”
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow. I know, I’ve left it too long. But it would be a great help. I could give you some money for groceries . . .”
“Well, sure, I don’ know. School’s out in a few weeks. You can’t wait till then?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“You know”—Lina hesitated—“Enrique and Gene haven’t been such close friends lately.”
“To be honest, Lina, I’m kind of up a tree. I have no one else to ask.”
Lina looked into her face. What a lonely, lonely woman, she thought, lonelier than her son, even. Connie had always seemed like a crabby aunt, even though she was only a couple years older than Lina. If only she would take her hair out of that bun, she would look so much younger. As it was, her head with its narrow jaw on its skinny neck was the shape of a lightbulb.
“Sure. No problem. Just tell him to come over at six every night. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll come get him.”
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