Alex glanced down at the headstone, the flowers. “I know you’re going to marry Martha.”
John looked over Alex’s shoulder, to the car. To Martha’s face in the passenger window. He knew she was worried, concerned. “That’s not possible, Alex.”
Alex grinned a little, lifted his eyes up to the December sky as if he wanted to laugh at God. “Anything is possible,” he declared.
“Martha is married to—”
“To my boyfriend’s stepfather. I know. I think about that all the time, Dad. It creeps me out.”
John flinched at the word boyfriend. Even though he knew what Martha had told him about Alex and Robby was true, it still punched him in the gut to hear his own son admit it. As much as he loved Alex, it was so hard for him to understand it. How could someone be gay?
“You said something to me a few days after your mom died,” he said. “We were on the front porch. You said something in Armenian.”
Alex folded his arms across his chest and clenched his fists. “Haskanum em,” he answered. “It means—”
“It means I understand,” John said. “That’s exactly what your mother would want.”
“For me to understand you’re sleeping with the lady who lives across the street?”
John shook his head. “If she were here, she might help me understand you. Whatever this thing is you have with Robby—”
“Well, she’s not here!” Alex shouted. “And maybe if one of us would’ve understood how lonely and sad and homesick she was, she’d still fucking be here!”
John reached for Alex, but his son jerked back with a staunch warning of “Don’t touch me.”
“What do you want me to do, Alex? You want me to spend the rest of my life alone? Feeling guilty over your mother? Is that what you want? Huh?”
“I want you to miss her as much I do!”
“That’s impossible, because I miss her more.”
“Bullshit. All you care about is Martha. The two of you make me sick.”
“I haven’t said one word about what you’re doing with Robby. I stayed out of it.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Dad. I’m gay. I’m in love with Robby. Deal with it!”
“And I loved your mother very much. But I also love Martha. She makes me happy, Alex. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”
Alex’s composure collapsed then. He crumbled right in front of his father. Thick tears sprang from Alex’s eyes and burned his cheeks. “Because,” he stammered. “I never even got to say good-bye to her.”
John grabbed his son’s arms, trying to hold him up by his elbows, but Alex slid right out of his grasp. He fell to his knees, then to the ground. He was on his side, pressing his body against the earth above his mother’s grave, as if he wanted the world to split open wide and swallow him alive.
John turned toward the car, afraid and unsure. But Martha was already there, running across the cemetery, rushing past John, and dropping to the ground to reach Alex. She pulled the boy into her arms, holding him close, soothing him with her soft voice and touch while he sobbed uncontrollably for his dead mother.
Martha fought back her own tears. In that moment, John realized how strong she was inside. “Don’t worry,” she whispered to Alex. “It’s going to be okay.”
John swallowed the lump of sadness clenching the sides of his throat. A sense of peace crept over him as he stood, watching Martha comfort his son. In John’s heart, he knew Martha was right. That somehow, everything really would be okay.
Jillian
Jillian had just slipped another piece of paper inside the Chinese wish box when her mother appeared in the bedroom doorway, wide-eyed and fire-faced. “What in the hell is this?” she demanded.
Jillian glanced down to the yellow piece of paper in her mother’s hand. Test results.
“What the fuck?” Jillian yelled. “Did you go through my purse?”
“I was looking for a lighter.”
“Why? I don’t smoke.”
Delilah’s voice cracked the air around them. “Don’t lie!” she shouted, waving the paper violently, as it were about to burn her. “Is this true?”
“What do you think?” Jillian spat back. She moved away from her mother and stood facing the window. She looked out at the front lawn, across the street to the beautiful Christmas lights strung around the neighbor’s house. “Like mother, like daughter…isn’t that what they say?”
Delilah stepped into the room. Jillian could feel her mother’s words pounding against her back. “You better do something about this, Jillian. Or, what…you wanna end up like me? Is that it?”
Jillian reached out and placed her palm against the cold glass. She closed her eyes. For a moment, she saw Alex in her mind. She drifted for a second, deep into the memory. He was younger. Ten. Maybe eleven. He was waiting for her in his navy blue ski parka and red mittens. “Wanna go play?” he was asking her, just like he had a million times. She would nod in agreement and follow him around the neighborhood. They would laugh and chase each other. They would build things with their hands. They would lie on the grass and look up at the stars and the moon. They dreamed aloud about places they would go when they grew up. Together. Just the two of them.
Jillian opened her eyes. She hated the fact their childhood was long gone. She knew, no matter what, they would never get those moments back. Their lives were too complicated now. Never again would they have time to run and play.
“I’d rather die than get stuck here,” Jillian answered her mother.
Martha
“Jillian,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
The young girl was standing on the LaMonts’ front lawn, shivering in the moonlight.
She’d found Jillian by chance. Martha was across the street, ready for the clock to strike midnight to celebrate the new year with John, Robby, and Alex. She suddenly remembered the jumbo bag of frozen pizza rolls she’d purchased last week and stored in the freezer in her garage.
“I’ll be right back!” she hollered over the music and frivolity. All three men were sitting around the kitchen table playing a highly competitive game of Yahtzee.
“Bring us something to eat, Mom!” Robby yelled back.
“I’m on it!” she explained.
Halfway across the street, she spotted Jillian. Her back was to Martha, but she was certain it was her. She was wearing a peach-colored blouse and a white denim skirt—hardly appropriate clothes for such a cold December night. Her sneakers were wet and caked with dirt as if she’d been walking through the damp night for hours.
When Jillian didn’t answer her, Martha moved around the girl to get a glimpse of her face. That’s when she saw the tears streaming down her red cheeks. Her teeth were chattering and she was shaking, almost uncontrollably.
Jillian’s tearful gaze was locked on the house, and Martha couldn’t decide if Jillian was crushed with sadness or rage. But there was an intense glow in her brown eyes that chilled Martha to the core.
Immediately, Martha slipped off her yellow cardigan and wrapped it around Jillian’s thin shoulders. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Honey, we weren’t expecting you. Alex didn’t tell me you were coming by. He said you haven’t been feeling well.”
Still, there was no response. Just more tears.
“Of course you’re welcome to join us. But you need to calm down first and tell me what’s wrong.”
Jillian nodded as if to acknowledge Martha’s kind words had broken through her semi-catatonic state. That there was hope.
“You want me to go get Alex? He’ll be happy to see you. And Robby, too.”
The young girl shook her head. “No,” she said. “I didn’t come here to see Alex.”
Martha followed Jillian’s line of sight up to the second-floor window, to Harley’s home office. His desk lamp was on, filling the window with a soft orange burst of light. But the curtains were drawn, so only Harley’s silhouette was visible from where they stood on the lawn.
And then sh
e knew exactly why Jillian was there.
“Who’d you come here to see?” she asked cautiously.
Jillian turned to Martha and answered. “You.”
Martha felt her pulse quicken and a cold sweat break out in the small of her back. A terrible wave of nausea swept over her and she covered her hand with her mouth, afraid she might be sick on the dead lawn.
“I don’t have anyone else to talk to,” Jillian explained. “Mrs. LaMont…I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Just tell me,” Martha begged. Her face was numb from the temperature, from the icy situation unfolding on her front lawn. “I already know what you’re going to say, Jillian.”
Jillian strangely looked relieved by Martha’s words. Her dry, cracked lips lifted into a half-smile. “You do?”
Martha nodded, swallowed, then spoke. “You’re not the first.”
Jillian wiped at her eyes with trembling fingers. “I didn’t think so.”
Martha reached for the girl, put her hands on her shoulders, rubbed her palms against her to give her more warmth. “He’s done this before,” she said.
“Is that why you moved here?” Jillian asked. “Is that why you left Pittsburgh and came to Harmonville?”
Martha looked away, back over her shoulder, to the house across the street. “Yes,” she answered.
“How could you stay with him, then?” Jillian wanted to know.
Martha closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the day years ago when she stepped off the train in Pittsburgh, with her ballet slippers tucked inside her purse. There had been so much hope in her heart. She hadn’t felt it since.
I was so young then.
“Harley LaMont has broken a lot of hearts,” she said to Jillian and to the young girl she once was, still standing in the middle of the crowded train station. “I’m guessing he’s ended your affair. And I’m sure he’s hurt you real bad.”
Jillian stepped back from Martha, rejecting her touch and her words. “You’re wrong,” she said. The conviction in her voice startled Martha. “Harley didn’t break up with me.” Martha felt her face begin to crumble. She couldn’t be strong anymore. It was over. She was done with this ridiculous charade. Jillian continued, “I ended things with him, only he isn’t taking it so well.”
Martha felt her bottom lip tremble as she struggled to get the question out. She already feared the answer before she asked, “And why’s that?”
Jillian pulled the yellow sweater tighter around her small frame and answered, “Because…Mrs. LaMont…I’m pregnant. I’m having Harley’s baby.”
*
Martha had already packed two suitcases and placed them in the foyer with her favorite purse by the time he emerged from his office, sauntered down the stairs, and headed toward the kitchen. But her voice stopped him in the pitch-black darkness, speaking from where she sat at the head of the table in the formal dining room. She heard Harley make a slight gasping sound, as if she’d scared him, taken him by surprise.
“Is it yours?” she wanted to know. It was a fight to keep her voice so calm, her tone so nonthreatening.
She heard his palm grazing the wall, brushing over the wallpaper in search of the light switch. He found it and flipped it, illuminating both of them in the middle of their end. It was then he saw the suitcases neatly lined up by the front door.
“Martha?” he said to the luggage, and not to her.
“Is it yours?” she repeated.
He turned and looked at her. For a moment, her left eye twitched as she battled with the overwhelming impulse to pick up the crystal centerpiece in the middle of the table and heave the empty fruit bowl at him. “Jillian Dambro says she’s having your child,” Martha revealed, her voice quaking under the tight control she was using to prevent herself from detonating in the dining room. “Is that true?”
He didn’t answer. No response. No immediate denial. No blaming someone else. Just nothing.
Martha pushed herself away from the edge of the table, sliding her chair with such tremendous force the back of it slammed into the wall behind her and gouged the plaster. She rose to her feet with her fists clenched at her sides. The explosion of her voice filled the entire room like a sonic roar, rattling the chandelier above them. “Is it yours?”
Harley didn’t look at her. He simply nodded, lowered his head in shame, and walked out of the room. She heard him on the stairs, climbing them slowly. Seconds later, the door to his home office closed with a high-pitched creak. Then the opera music started. It filled the second story of their house, and the agony of the dramatic piece—the devastation in the trilling voice of the diva—crashed inside an empty place in Martha’s heart.
She walked to the front door. She reached for her purse, slipped the strap over her shoulder. She slid her fingers through the firm handles of her two suitcases, tilting them back on their wheels, and stepping out into the wintry night.
Martha stopped for a moment, in the middle of the street. A half hour ago, just seconds after Jillian left, Martha realized she had choices. She reviewed them again while standing in the road. She could turn back—just like she did twice before in Pittsburgh—and go back inside the house that would never be her home and find a way to forgive Harley.
Or she could continue to the other side of the street, where a man who thought he loved her would be waiting for her—but who really wanted his dead wife to come home. No matter how hard she tried, Martha could never be her.
So Martha chose another alternative: she’d made a call in the kitchen before confronting Harley. And, as promised by the stranger she’d spoken to on the phone ten minutes ago, the yellow taxi pulled up beside her, right on time.
The young driver put her suitcases into the trunk and helped her into the backseat of the cab. Even from where she sat, she could hear their voices, happy and shouting, as John, Robby, and Alex started their ten-second countdown to the new year. Without her.
She waited until they were out of the neighborhood before she leaned forward and asked the baby-faced driver, “What time is it?”
He met her eyes in the rearview mirror and answered, “It’s twelve oh five.” He smiled at her and added, “Happy new year.”
Martha leaned back in the cab. She reached for her purse, opened it, and dug out her wallet. She double-checked, making certain she had enough cash for a one-way bus ticket to Florida.
Part Two
May/Mayis
Robby
Robby never even knew what hit him. He had his headphones on. There was enough time between fourth and fifth period to listen to “Silence Is Golden” by Garbage, a song he’d recently discovered and had been listening to religiously.
Because of the music in his ears, Robby had no idea when or who threw the first punch—what direction the first blow came from. He only felt the pain. It rippled through his body, unfurling in violent shock waves, rushing to every nerve ending.
After the first hit, more came. It was a sudden burst, a flurry, a torrential downpour. A dark storm cloud had been ripped open wide and was sending a thousand pounding fists against Robby’s skin.
He could smell them, his attackers. They reeked of dirt, sweat, repugnant anger. They were guys—just like him—but stronger, bigger, vicious. He reached for them with his soft hands, hoping if they knew how gentle he was they’d love him instead of hate him. He made contact with the sleeves of their shirts, the skin on their arms. But no matter how hard he tried to touch them, they kept slipping out of his grasp.
They wouldn’t stop. They wanted Robby destroyed.
Dead.
But Robby fought off the blackness. He refused to let the dark win. Instead, he concentrated on the words to the song—even though the music had stopped, had been ripped away from him—he kept playing it in his mind. He sang it in his own muted voice.
When they grew tired of pummeling him with their hard fists, they forced him to the ground, held him down against his will. He stopped struggling when he tasted the bitterness o
f the asphalt, when he felt the sharp ridges of black bits of gravel pressing into his face.
They used their feet then. The tips of their basketball shoes and cowboy boots collided with his body. The air was crushed out of him, but he kept clinging to every lyric, every line of the song. He refused to let go of it. It was all he had, but it was all he needed.
Then he saw her, and she was so beautiful Robby felt a surge of love explode like fireworks in his soul. She was the lead singer of the band, the goddess with the urgent voice. He smiled at the sight of her, stunned by the halo of golden light bathing her. She was only in his mind, but Shirley Manson seemed real enough for Robby to reach for.
Instead, she reached for him.
She held out her hands and Robby accepted them in his. She pulled him gently into her arms, holding on to him, soothing and comforting him.
She took over the song for him then, singing the words and letting them fall like warm drops of rain into his ears. With each note, her emotions intensified. Robby could sense the moment she began to cry. He knew the tears she shed weren’t only for him, but for someone else. Maybe someone she’d lost. Someone she loved as much as he loved Alex.
He could feel the heat of her skin, the incredible amount of strength and the unbreakable will she was infusing him with. He refused to let go of her. He knew she would never leave him, not until it was all over.
When the kicking stopped, they used objects made of wood. Something broke across Robby’s body, splintering into pieces.
In his mind, Shirley tightened her loving grip on his body, cradling Robby against her, and he knew.
How badly she wanted to protect him, shield him with her own skin.
Alex
“Take good care of him,” the school nurse said. Alex couldn’t remember her name, but he knew Jillian had christened her the Gila Monster back in ninth grade. Alex silently cursed his best friend because the nickname now seemed really appropriate. So much so that he found it difficult not to laugh at her.
Swimming to Chicago Page 11
