“Got it,” I said.
“Well, come on, girl. Let’s get a move on then,” he said, stepping out into the store.
That might make it sound like Max and I were good friends, but we weren’t. Most Sundays, he would simply wave from the office, or talk with me for a few minutes before I wandered off to start filling my cart. To be fair, in the past few months he had walked with me more often—a few times, maybe four. I took that as a sign that Max was getting bored with the Winn-Dixie, even though he never said one negative thing about it. I could have asked, I suppose, but I didn’t want to draw attention to the increased frequency of his company—in case it would have scared him off. Part of me always felt like I was walking beside a rare deer that stayed nearby so long as you pretended not to notice it. Look at it straight on and it would startle and disappear forever.
“I need to get sardines,” I said.
Max wrinkled his nose. “Since when do you buy sardines?” he asked.
I shrugged. “They’re on the list,” I said. I didn’t like to be cagey around Max but I’d promised Judy that I wouldn’t go around spouting off facts and stories about Joshua Reed. Turns out, I didn’t need to be half so cautious.
“I hear you’ve got something of a houseguest,” Max said. He looked me straight in the eyes, and when I tried to look away, he held my chin so that I couldn’t. Not that I minded having to look at him.
Here’s what I saw when I looked at Max Campbell: I saw the guy who once ran into the middle of traffic to save a dog that had been hit by a car. I watched it happen, and I screamed for him, because by that point, I’d had some experience with death and didn’t want any more. I watched it happen and even as I watched, I knew that the dog wouldn’t make it, but Max ran out into the road anyway. Later, after the vet had put the dog down and Momma had given Max a new T-shirt to wear, since his had been ruined by blood, Max admitted that, yeah, he’d figured that the dog was too broken to live. “But I couldn’t let it die all scared like that,” he’d told me.
When I looked at Max, I also saw the gangly, twelve-year-old boy my brother Beau Ray brought home after school one day, soon after the Campbells moved to Pinecob. Max, who already had a job by then, helped his dad sell peanuts and popcorn at the minor league baseball stadium. That was a forty-five minute drive, each way, twice a week, and he didn’t even get to keep what he earned.
And of course I saw the guy I’d dreamed of marrying, all through those silly middle-school years, trying out “Leanne Campbell” and “Max loves Leanne” and “Leanne-n-Max, TLA” (meaning “true love always”) in my best cursive. I learned quick to rip out those notebook pages though, what with Beau Ray always grabbing a sheet for his paper football games.
Most people looking at Max wouldn’t see the things I saw. They’d see straight off that he was good-looking, with these crazy blue eyes, the color of brand-new jeans. And a sort of heavy, brown hair that faded gold in the summer sun, and a perfect smile, like Robert Redford, almost. People also noticed, after a while at least, how he was missing most of his right earlobe, from when a dog (not the one he tried to save) bit him when he was three.
And now here he was, holding my chin and asking me about my “houseguest.” Max looked amused, like he was in a real light mood—which didn’t seem fair, given all the heavy things I was dealing with.
“Someone at my house? What do you mean?” I asked. “What did you hear?”
Max dropped his hand. He leaned in as if to tell me a secret. It was probably as close as he’d ever been to me, at least since I was twelve and started needing a bra and Momma said I shouldn’t play touch football with Beau Ray’s friends anymore. All of my nerves set to tingling at once. I could feel the heat of his cheek almost touching mine. I caught the barest scent of him and wanted more. But I knew that Max likely had no conception of this, of any of this. He was just leaning in so as to seem all hush-hush.
“I heard he’s going to be there for ninety days. Did you actually think there was such thing as privacy around here?” He stepped away again and looked all satisfied with himself.
“I hoped,” I said. “I mean, we can’t get cable or California Red Ale, but heaven forbid, you try to keep something quiet or personal.” I knew as I was saying them that the words were coming out more snappish than I meant—or rather, I was snappish about those things, but Max was hardly to blame (even if he was associate manager and could probably have ordered the California Red Ale that Joshua, the night before, had mentioned he favored).
“Didn’t mean to get you riled, Leanne. Honest,” Max said. “I only wondered if it was true.” Max dropped a bag of carrots into my shopping cart. Beau Ray went through a bag each week.
I looked at the carrots and felt guilty. Why shouldn’t Max be allowed a little satisfaction?
“You didn’t upset me,” I said. “I was there already. It’s not like he wants to be with us. Tell the truth, he’s not very nice,” I said.
Max frowned. “Ain’t that a wonder. You want me to kick his ass?”
I knew he wasn’t serious, but it was nice to have the offer. “You wouldn’t really, would you?”
“Not without a pretty big reason,” Max admitted. “Do you think I could take him?”
I tried to imagine Joshua standing right beside Max. They were probably pretty evenly matched, Joshua maybe a hair taller, but I knew what the right answer was.
“No question about it,” I said to him. Max smiled again and I felt like I’d paid up.
That’s when the camera crew came up to me, right there in the middle of the Winn-Dixie produce department. There were three of them—a man with a big news camera, another with headphones and cords and a woman with a microphone. The woman wore really red lipstick and had blond hair that did the sort of perfect flip I could never get my hair to do.
She smiled at me and said something like, “Excuse me, Leanne, Marcy Thompson from ABC’s Hollywood Express? I was wondering whether I could have a minute of your time. That okay? Great!” A light flicked on above the camera, and it felt as if a laser beam had pinned me into place.
“What are you doing?” is what I heard myself ask, but Marcy Thompson didn’t reply. I think she had a list of questions she wanted to get through, whether or not I answered them.
“I understand you’ve got a special visitor in your house,” she said.
I nodded.
“Is it true that Joshua Reed, the actor, was remanded—”
“It’s true,” I managed to say. “He’s there.” I looked for Max, but he suddenly seemed far off. I tried to catch his eye, but he just stared at the camera and the light and the woman with perfect hair.
“That must be very exciting,” Marcy said. “Are you getting some special foods for him today? Is there anything in particular he likes to eat?”
“I’m only getting what’s on my list,” I said, and held the paper up like a shield that might protect me from Marcy and Hollywood Express. It didn’t.
“What’s it like waking up with Joshua Reed in the house?” Marcy asked me.
“Are you kidding?” I said.
She blinked at me and bobbed her head a little bit and held the microphone still. I’m not sure why, but I felt obligated to tell her.
“Imagine you’re at breakfast and some stranger walks in, asking where’s the coffee. That’s pretty much what it’s like. In the morning at least.”
All the while, I’d been backing slowly away from her and the camera, and right at that moment, I’d backed up against a pyramid of apples and couldn’t go any farther. I must have bumped it a little hard, or in the wrong place, because I felt the pyramid shift, and a tumble of apples roll down behind me.
“Ooh!” Marcy Thompson said. “Watch out!”
I spun around to try to catch them.
“It’s okay, Leanne,” I heard Max say. “Don’t worry about it.” He was suddenly next to me again, and put his arm out to stop the apples from careening every which way. “Sorry, ma’am, but
we’ve got a bit of an applelanche here.” He said this to the woman with the microphone and the perfect hair. She laughed.
The man with the headphones suddenly pulled them off and took a cell phone from his pocket.
“Yeah?” he said into it.
“Cut here,” Marcy said to the camera man, and the bright light went out. I could see purple and yellow spots when I blinked.
“There in ten,” the man on the cell phone said and hung up. “We’ve got Reed, back at the house. Exclusive.”
“Yes! Psych!” Marcy said. She turned back to me and Max. “Thanks guys. See you later.”
I turned to Max. “I’d better get back to work,” he said. An apple fell onto my left foot and bounced away.
That night, Beau Ray and Joshua and I sat in the living room and watched ABC’s Hollywood Express exclusive interview with Joshua Reed. It had been taped in our backyard while Momma was out of the house. Joshua looked relaxed and friendly. He laughed with Marcy, and sounded serious and remorseful in all the right places. He talked about “the pressures” he’d been under and how “the experience” had taught him so much and how he was just trying to get back on track and how much he appreciated the good wishes from Marcy and her staff. By the time he stopped talking, Marcy looked like she would have been willing to curl up with him in Vince’s room for the rest of his sentence. Part of my interrupted interview also made it in. The stranger at breakfast part. And also the apples, and Max calling it an “applelanche.”
“I get my own coffee,” Joshua complained. “Some of the time at least.”
“Whatever,” I said. Ending the day with a national news report that showed me wrecking apples at the Winn-Dixie seemed right on target. “I’m going to bed,” I said.
But the phone rang as soon as I got upstairs. It was Judy.
“I just finished watching the Hollywood Express interview,” she said. “Next time, try to sound a little more enthusiastic, okay?”
I told her that I was sorry. “They followed me. I didn’t expect it,” I said.
“Of course. I forget that you’re not used to this,” Judy said.
“But Joshua sounded good,” I said.
“Didn’t he though? That’s my boy. Hollywood Express doesn’t have the highest rating, but it’ll still do a lot for us. I told you he’s a great actor. So listen, who was that guy with you, the one with the apples?”
“Who?” I asked her. “Max?”
“Is that his name? Is he a friend of yours or does he just work there?”
I told her that Max was a friend—or rather, how he and Beau Ray had been good friends, and how I saw him every now and again, and most Sundays.
“He looks good on screen,” Judy said.
“And off,” I told her. “In high school, he was voted most photogenic.”
“Oh really?” Judy asked. “Do I sense that you harbor a crush?”
I felt my heart start to race. I regretted being so obvious. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t. I don’t really want to talk about it,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Judy assured me.
“It’s just,” I tried to explain, “Max is great, but everyone will tell you that he’s still got a thing for his ex-wife. It seems like a lot of uphill.”
“Ah, the old ex-wife,” Judy said. “Why don’t you ask him out and find out?”
“God, no!” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve known him since I was eight, for one.”
“That’s a long time to harbor a crush,” Judy said.
I wanted to change the subject. I didn’t want to get to the second reason. I asked her why she’d given an exclusive interview to Hollywood Express, if it didn’t have a high rating.
“It’s the highest-rated show on ABC,” Judy said. “And I understand that’s the clearest of your five channels.”
That’s how the first week ended and the second one began. Judy was right—after Joshua’s Emmy-worthy performance with Marcy Thompson and her perfect hair, the press backed off. For the next couple weeks, there was often a news van nearby during the daylight hours, but rarely more than one, and after that, they left altogether. I didn’t much care for the on-camera types, but the sound guys and van technicians all seemed decent, and a few of them let Beau Ray hold cameras, look at monitors and listen in their headphones. He even got one crew to drive him to his “Move Your Body, Move Your Mind” class on a particularly slow day. Nothing had held his attention that long since his accident.
Even Momma didn’t seem to mind the press after that. “So long as they stay out of our garbage,” she said. (She’d become sort of obsessed with the vision of someone digging through our trash cans.) I wasn’t sure if it was because of Beau Ray’s enthusiasm or because things had continued with Bill Weintraub. She didn’t say, and I was afraid to ask. Part of me thought that she was actually enjoying the attention her legal guardian status brought. Susan had called home more regularly since Joshua moved in—to check in with Momma, officially, though I figured she was hoping Joshua would answer the phone. Even Tommy called a few times after the Hollywood Express interview aired, though I could have done without his “way to go with the apples” commentary.
That Tuesday, when I dropped Joshua at his AA meeting, there were fifteen people in my old French classroom. That Thursday, maybe twenty-five. It was so crowded that Grant Pearson had to move the meeting to the small lecture hall, and the following week, to the gym. Such is the power of television, or at least, a well-placed interview on Hollywood Express.
Friday night marked the end of day twelve. I was up in my room reading when I heard a car in the driveway. It was getting late—I figured it was Momma back from her date, until I heard a girly shriek, and then a giggle.
I opened my window shade and looked down at the front lawn. A woman I didn’t recognize stood on the grass. The motion-sensitive lights that Momma had set up lit her from above, so I couldn’t tell how old she was, maybe twenty, maybe older. She had long brown hair, and looked kind of pretty, what I could see of her face. I noticed right away that she was stumbling around, squinting in the light, and that she was trying to undo the buttons on her blouse. She looked up at my window.
“Joshua Reed!” she called out. The car in the driveway flashed its lights and honked. “Joshua Reed!” she called again. “Come out and play! I got a present!”
“Hey, Joshua,” I called across the hall. “You’ve got a visitor.”
“I’m sleeping,” he said, even though I could see that his light was on.
So I told him that his visitor was taking off her shirt, and he jumped out of bed and came into my room. He looked out the window, down to the girl in the yard.
“Yoo-hoo!” she called up. “Hey there, is that you? Come out and play!” She looked like she might topple over.
Joshua shook his head and turned away from the window. “At least in L.A., the freaks are good-looking,” he said. He wandered back to his bedroom.
I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that she couldn’t be on the lawn when Momma did get home. I went downstairs and out the front door. The girl was still weaving on the grass, her shirt halfway off. I was glad she was wearing a bra. I could hear giggles from the car.
“Hey,” I called out to get her attention. I told her that Joshua would not be coming down.
“Then I’ll go up,” she said, and lurched in the direction of the front door.
“You can’t.”
“I can’t?” She looked confused. When I saw her up close, I could tell that she wasn’t so young. She looked older than I was.
“No. Besides,” I said. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
The woman leaned in. She smelled strongly of alcohol.
“He’s good-looking and all,” I told her, “but he’s a real asshole.”
The woman teetered a bit, frowned, and nodded. “That’s okay,” she said, slurring a little. “I don’t mind.”
“No, really. A real asshole
. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“I don’t mind,” she said again. “It’s Joshua Reed.”
“Jesus,” I said. I yelled toward the car. “Take her home or I’m going to have to call the police. This whole area is posted no trespassing.”
I heard the car door open. By the time I was closing the front door, her friends were pulling her off the lawn. By the time I was back upstairs, the car was out of our driveway.
“Is she gone?” Joshua asked.
“Yep,” I said. “I told her that you were an asshole, but she wanted to sleep with you anyway.”
“Fame’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said.
Chapter 8
The Guys
The next Sunday when I was back at the Winn-Dixie, no one followed me. Max was there, and he walked with me again, and told me that their distributor was checking to see if they could get California Red Ale. That’s the exact sort of thing Max did that made him hard to forget about.
We filled up the cart—milk, dry cereal, apples, pasta, hamburger, eggs, bread, cheese, carrots. The usual stuff. Max walked beside me and passed along gossip he’d heard in the previous week about people we both knew. He said that Loreen (the skank that Howard Malkin once cheated on me with) had come in and bought a home pregnancy test. He said that Brennie Critchett had hauled out four cases of Budweiser.
“She’s stronger than she looks,” Max said, sounding impressed.
“I thought what people bought was confidential,” I told him. “Isn’t the Winn-Dixie associate manager like a priest or something? You know, cone of silence? Manager-shopper privilege?”
“That’s the manager you’re thinking of,” Max said. “The associate manager can be a terrible gossip.” He grinned at me.
“Makes me nervous, you watching things so close,” I said. “I hope you’re not going to start telling people how I bought sardines for some strange man.”
Max laughed. “Sometimes I watch close and sometimes I can miss everything, if you hadn’t noticed. But I wouldn’t rat you out, Leanne,” he said. I wanted to believe him. “Though you can bet that people are asking.”
Mean Season Page 9
