Absolute Brightness

by James Lecesne

  “To every article.

  I boarded the king’s ship; now on the beak,

  Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,

  I flamed amazement: sometime I’d divide,

  And burn in many places; on the topmast,

  The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,

  Then meet and join.”

  When he was finished, the hall was silent. What was there to say? Even though I’d only understood every third word, I had to admit I was impressed. And so, it seemed, was everybody else. No one stirred. Despite the overt theatricality of his gestures and the almost ludicrous intonation of his spritelike self, Leonard had managed to convey the poetry and drama of the situation. In other words, the kid could act. But with no response coming back at him, he mistook the quiet for the opposite of encouragement, and I watched him visibly deflate. As he leaned over to retrieve his book from the floor, he shrugged it off and all traces of Ariel were extinguished. He was done for the day.

  Mr. Buddy came galumphing excitedly down the aisle toward the stage. He parked himself at the apron and motioned to Leonard to come forward. Once Leonard stepped out of the light, I could only guess at what was being said; the two of them spoke softly to each other, and I could only make out the shadows of their heads nodding and nuzzling like horses in the dark. I suspected that Mr. Buddy was quietly praising the boy’s talents, and then assuring him that no matter what happened between now and the summer, he would have a leading part in Ms. D’s production of The Tempest. And I imagined that, for the first time in Leonard’s life, he didn’t say much, because he was as surprised as we all were that day to discover that he had a talent for much more than survival.

  seven

  SPRING HAPPENED IN Neptune, and just like always the tang of ocean brine came drifting ashore to mix with the sweet scent of blossoming linden trees. It was a heady scent, nature’s perfume designed to make everybody long for what they didn’t have. It was a complicated thing that got into your nose, then traveled to your brain and ended up making you crazy. For Leonard, however, who had never even seen the ocean until he came to live in Neptune, spring in our town came as a first-time shock, and it stirred up in him a restlessness he never knew he had. About once a week, he would blow off his shift at the salon by telling Mom he had stuff to do and then disappear.

  “Stuff?” she wanted to know. “What kind of stuff?”

  “Nothing really,” he told her, as he breezed out the door of the salon. “Just stuff.”

  Finally, my mother, who was never very good at allowing people in her charge to go wandering off on their own, wanted to know what was going on. She cornered Leonard one afternoon right outside his “boxed set.” I was folding laundry, and because the dryer was quietly tumbling delicates, I happened to overhear the whole thing.

  “You have to tell me where you’re going, Leonard, and what you’re doing. And don’t tell me stuff. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Okay,” he said, lowering his voice as though he was about to give away trade secrets. “It’s the weltschmerz.”

  “The what?”

  “Weltschmerz. Translated from the German, it roughly means ‘world sadness.’ Sometimes I get it kinda bad. What helps is to just sit on the beach and watch the ocean roll in. I don’t know. It, like, sorta soothes me.”

  Maybe because Leonard was an orphan, my mother didn’t argue with him. She started letting him go off by himself without much of an explanation, and she gave up the need to keep tabs on him every minute of the day the way she did with Deirdre and me. I was pretty sure weltschmerz wouldn’t have worked nearly so well as an excuse where I was concerned. Plus, if I had tried it, Mom would’ve accused me of being a smart aleck and then punished me for eavesdropping.

  Whether Leonard actually went to sit by the ocean that spring and summer, and whether he observed the uninterrupted boredom of waves rolling in, I don’t know. I never followed him to find out. But not long after his audition, the cast list for Ms. Deitmueller’s summertime production of The Tempest was posted on the wall right outside the Drama Club, and Leonard’s name appeared on that list, so naturally I figured that weltschmerz was just his cover-up for after-school Drama Camp business.

  It was a Tuesday evening and Mom had just locked up the salon for the night. I was making vegetarian sloppy joe sandwiches in the kitchen. Deirdre was, as usual, up in her room, keeping to herself and out of the way. Mom sat hunched over the kitchen table, her glasses slipping down her nose, intent on putting a pile of receipts from the previous month in order. Suddenly Leonard came banging into the kitchen; he was seriously out of breath and he didn’t have his backpack with him. He quickly shut the door behind him and then stood against it as if barricading it with his body. Mom and I stared at him.

  “Hi,” he said. “Sorry I’m late. Um … I’ll be in my room. Bye.”

  As a performance it wasn’t convincing.

  “Leonard?” Mom said.

  He stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. From the wide-eyed, who-me look on his face, we knew right away that something was up. Something not good.

  “What’s going on with you? Where’s your bag?”

  “Um … it’s … I left it in … Wait. I have to pee so bad.”

  He made a run for it, leaping across the kitchen, racing up the stairs and disappearing into the bathroom, before anyone could object. Mom and I looked at each other.

  When he finally came back downstairs, Mom had already pushed aside her paperwork and we were seated at the table eating our sloppy joes. As usual, I had set the table for four. Even though Deirdre hardly ever joined us anymore for a sit-down meal, Mom felt that it was important to make a show of including her. Most of the time Deirdre came down late for dinner, made herself a plate, and then took it back upstairs to her room. She preferred to eat while i-chatting with people who had interesting profiles and made-up names. Oddly, Mom never made an issue over Deirdre’s eating patterns. In fact, she only ever acknowledged the situation when Deirdre failed to return the used dinnerware too many nights in a row and we were forced to go hunting for spoons and cups.

  Anyway, Leonard slipped into the room, took his seat at the table, and tried to pretend as if Mom and I had suffered short-term memory loss.

  “Oooo,” he intoned, like a backup singer for an R&B recording artist. “Sloppy joes. My total fave.”

  It would be too painful to fully recount the interrogation process that followed. I watched my mother inch Leonard slowly toward a full confession. Leonard never had a chance. He was no match for Mom. Eventually he put down his napkin and cried into his lap. Mom had broken him.

  Leonard explained that he was coming home from yet another after-school session of Drama Camp, minding his own business.

  “Phoebe?” Mom said to me. “Did you know about this? Were you aware that he was involved in Drama Camp?”

  My silence was enough to damn me forever in her eyes.

  “Go on,” she said to Leonard. He told us that he’d just made the turn onto our street when he realized that he was being followed. He turned around and saw a boy he didn’t recognize. Leonard quickened his pace. But then so did the boy. He turned around again and saw that the boy was about a year older than him, maybe two. His hair was scruffy and his bangs hung down over his face. The boy tipped his chin up as a signal. “Wait up,” he said. Leonard froze. He knew he wouldn’t be able to outrun the boy. Why? Because strapped to each of Leonard’s ankles was a two-and-a-half-pound weight.

  “Wait a minute. Hold on,” Mom said as she closed her eyes and pressed the tips of her fingernails to her temples. “Ankle weights? Why?”

  He told us that he had not only been cast in Drama Camp’s production of The Tempest, but he had actually been given the part of a fairy. I think my groan was audible when he announced it, because Mom shot me a glance that I recognized; it meant shut it. Right away, Mr. Buddy had taken an interest in Leonard, because after all, he was going to be one
of the stars of the show and he had real talent. Leonard would need plenty of personal training such as movement, speech, and possibly jazz dance classes. Mr. Buddy’s first suggestion, however, required no special training. Leonard was presented with the weights and told that a time-tested method of preparing for the part of a sprite involved keeping the weights attached to his ankles right up until the actual performance. He was to go about his daily routine with the added weight, and then, on opening night, when he removed them, voilà, he would be amazed to discover that all his movements were much easier, more fluid, more fairylike.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Mom looked equally dumbfounded. Perhaps Leonard thought we were having trouble believing him, because at this point he extended his left leg, leaned over, and peeled down his tube sock. There was a slim blue canvas pack that weighed two and a half pounds secured to his ankle.

  “Go on,” Mom said for the second time. “What happened with the boy?”

  Since Leonard suspected that the boy’s intention was to beat him up and leave him for dead, he felt that running not only would be futile but would also be a bit like showing red to a bull. So he decided instead to stand his ground, not because he was brave, but because he knew he was going to need all his strength and breath to fight back. He waited as the boy caught up. They stood there on the sidewalk and talked.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Where you off to?”

  “Home.”

  “Why don’t you come behind this house with me?”

  “Huh?”

  “I won’t hurt you. Honest. It’ll be fun.”

  “No. I mean, I have to go home. I’m late.”

  “Two minutes.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Come on. Please?”

  “Um … okay.”

  Leonard waited for the boy to turn toward the house and lead the way around to the side where it was dark. He couldn’t see anyone, but he was sure there was a gang waiting to jump him and pummel him to death. He listened to the sound of his own feet crushing the just-mowed grass. He smelled the musty sweetness of the daffodils. Where was everyone? he wondered. Why were all the nearby houses dark? Who was going to save him?

  Right then, he dropped his backpack on the sidewalk and ran like bloody murder. He ran and ran and ran and never looked back. He was only half a block from home, but it felt like forever to the front steps. The door was locked, so he sprinted around to the back of the house. His leg muscles burned, his lungs stung him from the inside out, and his heart pumped harder than it should have. By the time he made it to the back door, he knew he was in the clear.

  But there was Mom to deal with.

  “And you say you never saw this boy before?” Mom wanted to know. She had stopped eating her sloppy joe a long time ago; it sat there on the plate, getting cold as she went from exasperation to concern. She was no longer mad at Leonard; now all her anger was focused on the mystery boy.

  “No. He’s definitely not from around here, or from our school. I would’ve remembered him.”

  “Did he … did he touch you at all? Anything? Any kind of—”

  “No. I told you, he was going to beat me up. I got out of there.”

  * * *

  After Leonard had eaten his dinner, Mom made him get in the car and drive around town looking for the boy. They never found him. They did manage to retrieve Leonard’s backpack, which was still sitting beside the darkened house with the daffodils, exactly where he had dropped it. Mom wanted to file a complaint with the police, but Leonard pleaded with her not to make a big deal over it. In the end, she felt he’d been through enough, so she let it go.

  My job, while they were out being vigilantes, was to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen. I had just finished scrubbing the stove, mopping up the sloppy part of the sloppy joes, when Deirdre appeared in the doorway.

  “Where’s Mom?” she asked. She placed her dirty dish in the sink and ran the water over it.

  “Out with Leonard,” I told her. “He got jumped by some kid and they’ve gone looking for him.”

  “Jumped?”

  “I don’t know. He cried. Mom’s all up in his business now. She says that if he’s going to do the Drama Camp thing, from now on he’s got to get a ride home.”

  Deirdre sat at the table in her seat. It was just like the old days, me doing the dishes and her fiddling with stuff on the table, us talking. Except now with her hair so short, she looked like an imposter of her former self and we didn’t have as much to say to each other. Over the past several months, she hadn’t really taken an interest in Leonard at all. She had demonstrated that she couldn’t care less about his comings and goings, his outfits, his ideas, and how he was influencing Mom and the women of the salon. She had other things on her mind, though what those things were, I couldn’t tell.

  She pulled a stack of scrap paper from the plastic holder that I had made for Mom at sleepaway camp about a gazillion years ago. She laid one of the pieces of paper out flat and then quickly and expertly folded it origami style into a tiny crane. Then she made a duck, an elephant, a camel, and a pig. In a matter of minutes, the table was littered with a small paper menagerie. I’d forgotten that she could do this. Years ago she checked a book out of the local library; it was written in Japanese, but by carefully following the diagrams, she had been able to teach herself how to make things.

  “Well, I hope she’s not planning to make him ride in a car alone with Buddy Howard. That would be a mistake. I mean, considering.”

  She held up a paper bird, and by gently manipulating its tail, she made its wings flap up and down. We both smiled, and then, as a kind of peace offering, she handed it to me. My hand was wet, which caused the head of the thing to instantly bloat and go limp. I’d ruined it. Deirdre laughed, grabbed it back, and bunched it into a ball. She shot it across the room and, like an ace player, landed the wad bingo in the garbage pail.

  “Considering what?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding? Mr. Buddy and Leonard? Alone? Think about it, Pheeb. No. Never mind. Don’t. It’s too lurid.”

  As she made the last of her origami animals (a rabbit), Deirdre could tell I didn’t have a clue.

  “Sex, Phoebe. Leonard is like walking bait for a perv like Buddy Howard. And don’t look so shocked.”

  I have to admit it had never occurred to me that Mr. Buddy had designs on any of the boys who took part in Drama Camp. The idea that he was after sex—and sex with a minor at that—was, well, it was lurid.

  “But you don’t think…,” I began weakly.

  “Please, Pheebs. Where have you been living?”

  She crumpled up her collection of paper napkins and tossed them one by one into the garbage. She hit her mark every time. Then she got up and checked out her reflection in the side of our old-fashioned chrome toaster. She gave what little hair she had a few quick brushes forward with her fingers, but it didn’t really respond, so she moved in close to inspect her eyes.

  “I’m thinking of doing kind of a Goth thing,” she announced without pulling back. She assumed I was still watching her and listening to her every word. And she was right; I was. “Not the outfits. I mean the outfits are a big don’t. But the eye treatment could work. Y’know, dark lids and some underliner. Whaddaya have in the way of shadow? Anything?”

  We went upstairs and I gave her what I had. She experimented while I watched her and waited for her to ask my opinion. I told her what she wanted to hear and she rolled her eyes at me. I didn’t care if she knew how desperate I was to be her friend. I didn’t care if I appeared to be a suck-up. I was just grateful to be standing in front of the mirror together like we used to, talking, and I didn’t want it to end.

  But then I heard Mom and Leonard enter the house.

  “Phoebe … Deirdre?” Mom called out from downstairs.

  Deirdre and I just looked at each other. She gave me a sad smile and then gently touched my cheek with the blush brush.

&
nbsp; “Don’t listen to me, Pheebs.” She whispered the words just loud enough for me to hear her, but soft enough that Mom wouldn’t. “I don’t know Buddy Howard’s story. I just know that there are bad people in the world. And bad things happen to people. You just gotta wake up, is all I’m saying.”

  “Phoebe!” Mom called again; this time she expected a response.

  “We’re up here,” Deirdre called out. “We’ll be right down.”

  She wiped her eyes clean with a pad, removing any trace of her new look. I guess she wasn’t ready to unveil it yet. She plopped a J.Crew bucket hat on her head, and together we clomped down the stairs into the living room. Mom and Leonard were sitting sad-sack on the sofa. Deirdre announced that she and I would be serving ice cream parfaits in a matter of minutes. We went into the kitchen, whipped up the parfaits, and served them in beer glasses, and then we all sat together in the living room. Instead of turning on the TV and tuning in to news about the bad things that bad people were up to that day, Deirdre and I entertained everyone with scandalous stories about Mom’s customers. Sometimes we even got up from our seats to act out the dramatic parts. We were hilarious.

  “Stop!” Mom cried, practically choking on her parfait. “You girls are so bad.”

  “No, no, Aunt Ellen. Please?” Leonard begged. “Don’t make them stop.”

  At that moment it was hard not to at least like Leonard; he was, after all, trying so hard. Perched on the edge of his seat, clapping at our antics and egging us on, he was making it plain that all he really wanted in this world was to be included. This, he seemed to be saying, is all I need to be happy. But unlike the rest of us, he didn’t care that his need showed; he wasn’t embarrassed by his ridiculous desire to be liked.