I’m not saying she couldn’t have done better—that’s beside the point. She made her decisions, and then I think she started believing that those decisions were the only ones out there. It’s not like she was unattractive, just weighed down by a lot, and after a time, I think she got used to the weight and forgot what life had felt like before.
But here was Judge Weintraub, in our kitchen, after almost ten years of time passing. Here was Judge Weintraub breathing in deep and saying, “Hey, would you look at that view.” I wanted to explain this to him, but all I could manage to say was that I was glad he was making my mother breakfast.
“Be nice to her, is all,” I asked him.
“I intend to,” he said.
“You want me to help with breakfast?” I asked, standing again. I was a little embarrassed for getting all heavy at such an early hour. “She likes things barely toasted.”
“You sit,” he said. “You do enough. Come to think, why don’t you sleep in a little? It’s awfully early.”
I didn’t know if I’d be able to fall back asleep, but figured I’d give it a try. Besides, I suddenly felt sort of shy. “So I guess I’ll see you around,” I said.
“I hope so,” the judge said.
I went to my room and crawled back into bed, this time leaving the door open. I must have been sound asleep by the time the judge came back upstairs. I didn’t hear a thing, didn’t hear him leave, didn’t hear Momma get up. I woke to the sound of Joshua opening his door. He was looking across the hall at the tray that had been left outside my doorway, set on the floor, a cup of coffee, a plate with two slices of toast, a glass of juice and an azalea flower from the bush in the backyard. It was all cold by the time I woke up, but that wasn’t the point.
“Why don’t I get breakfast in bed?” Joshua asked, and shuffled off to the bathroom.
“So you and Judge Weintraub,” I said, later, after Beau Ray and Joshua had eaten breakfast. Joshua was watching a talk show in the living room, and I’d followed Momma into the kitchen. She took a sponge from the counter and started scrubbing the sink. “You know, I ran into him this morning.”
“He said as much.” She kept scrubbing, her back to me. “You got a problem with that?”
“Of course not,” I said.
Momma put down the sponge and turned around to face me. She eyed me with the squint she always used when trying to suss out if one of us kids was lying. But I wasn’t lying.
“Don’t you?” she asked me.
“Why would I?” I asked her. “I like him. Hell, I would have introduced you two, you know, earlier on, if I thought you might—”
“I wasn’t looking,” Momma said, snap like a door closing.
“He asked me to dinner and I figured it would be polite to go. We got things in common.”
“Okay,” I said, although by that point I had remembered how she’d been humming all the way home from the courthouse that day.
“I thought it would do well for Joshua. Figured it might help his situation,” she told me.
“I hope you didn’t invite the judge in last night on account of the California crowd,” I said.
Her eyes got wide. “Leanne!” she said. She turned back to the sink and stood there, not talking but not really cleaning either.
“Are you mad?” I asked, after she hadn’t moved for a minute or so. “I didn’t mean it like an insult.”
“Not mad,” she said. “I’m just—” She petered off and stood up very straight. I knew what it was. Of course, I did. You don’t live by a river without learning its banks and curves and how to read flood signs.
“It’ll be ten years in November,” I said. “That’s a long time.”
“I know,” she said.
“And I think Dad would have…”
I watched her turn ever so slightly toward me, and it scared me a little. I could see that she was listening hard for an answer, and I knew I didn’t have one. I knew my own mind, but that was all. I guess with the dead, that’s all you’re left with—the minds of those left behind.
“You don’t need to decide anything right now,” I said. That’s what Sandy always told me, whenever I was wondering what to do—with a guy, or a job, or my life in general. It was like the chorus of our friendship, and when she said it, it always sounded true. I hoped it would then, too.
“I don’t, do I?” Momma asked. She turned around again. I was surprised to see that she’d been crying. “It’s a little scary,” she said. “It’s so different.” She wiped her eyes and managed a smile. “When did you get so smart?”
That was Monday. Tuesday was one of my work days— Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings. I went in at nine like always, and spent the first part of the morning answering Mr. Bellevue’s questions about Joshua. He’d taken to starting Tuesday mornings with, “So, tell me everything,” and he meant it. He wanted to hear everything Joshua had done or said or eaten since I’d left work the Friday before.
That day, I told him how I thought that Joshua was growing addicted to morning talk shows, especially Ricki Lake. How he and Beau Ray had played hide-and-seek in the backyard, but Beau Ray had hid back by the ditch, farther than Joshua was allowed to go, so that particular round ended up lasting near an hour, until Beau Ray wandered out again. I told him that I’d finally managed to send out new membership packets to the one hundred and forty-three people who’d joined the fan club in the previous month.
“You do live an exciting life,” Mr. Bellevue said.
I wondered what Mr. Bellevue had done in the past three days if typing out one hundred and forty-three membership cards qualified as exciting.
I had meant to grab a hamburger for lunch, but I got a call from the courthouse secretary asking me to come to Judge Weintraub’s chambers soon as I had a moment. So instead of the burger, I made my way over there. I didn’t know what he wanted. First, I worried that maybe Joshua had wandered past our mailbox and was headed straight for jail. Then I worried that some crazy fan might have broken into our house. Then I realized that it was probably something to do with Momma. I was afraid he was going to tell me that he’d changed his mind, that he’d realized it was a mistake—or worse, that my mother had called the whole thing off.
It put knots in my stomach as I got closer to the courthouse wing. Momma was probably too scared of the change, I figured. It felt too different, and she’d decided to run back to the frozen-in-time way things had been for the past nine, almost ten years. I hesitated knocking on his door for that reason, but he’d called me over and he was a judge, which tops the county courthouse food chain. So I knocked and when I heard him say, “Come in,” I did.
“You got my message,” the judge said. He was sitting at his desk.
I nodded.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat down.
“Leanne, communication is very important to me. As we go forward, I want to make sure that we’re clear with each other,” the judge said.
“Is there something we need to be clear on?” I asked him. I wanted to close my eyes.
“How are you feeling about me dating Lenore? Your mother?” he asked. “Are you uncomfortable? Does it make you angry? Or upset?”
“Are you still dating?” I asked him.
“Aren’t we? Do you know something I don’t?” he asked. He sat up a little higher. As soon as I saw that he looked worried, I knew I didn’t have any reason to be.
“Oh,” I said. “No. It’s fine. I feel fine about it. I think it’s great.” He nodded, but looked like he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me.
“And if I were to come for dinner during the week—or, say, if your mother were to spend time at my house, how would you feel about that?”
“Fine, I guess. Only it would be better if you were at our house, because then you could help with looking after Beau Ray.”
“I see your point.”
I was so relieved that I thought I might start giggling for no reason.
“How
often do you look after your brother now?” the judge asked.
“Most of the time I’m not here. Since I’m not signed up for any classes just now.”
“You were taking some courses, weren’t you?” the judge asked. “How were those going?”
“Great, when I can manage it.”
He nodded. “Your mother was worried that you might be having a hard time adjusting to our relationship. Hers and mine,” he said.
“I told her I was fine,” I said. “I think she’s the one having a hard time adjusting. It’s been a long time since my dad died. I’m sure you know that.”
The judge smiled. “And how are things with the criminal element?”
“Joshua? They’re okay, I guess. He sees it as a punishment, that’s for sure.”
“I prefer education to punishment. I hope he takes the opportunity to think about the consequences of his actions and to learn something. That’s all we can hope for.”
I was actually hoping for more than that, but I didn’t say so. I was hoping he’d turn out to be a decent guy, that he’d stop looking at me like I was some common hick, that I wouldn’t look back on that summer with a big load of regret on my shoulders. But I worried that maybe I was hoping for too much.
Chapter 9
Enter Alice
So I finally met Alice, Sandy’s Alice. It was a Wednesday, I remember, because it was midweek but there was no AA meeting. Alice drove over from Hagerstown, in Maryland, and the three of us went to dinner at the Chili’s in Charles Town. She wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. She had short blond hair and light skin and little girl features, like an old-fashioned doll. She looked like she’d be quiet and dainty, but instead, she laughed loudly, didn’t seem to worry much over keeping to polite topics and said whatever she felt like saying. She was more of a city girl than I’d expected. I liked her right off.
I’d been a little nervous about meeting her. I was worried it was going to feel weird. But right off the bat, Alice blurted out how she’d been nervous about meeting me, how she’d kept changing her clothes over it. She said she felt a little jealous—in a friendly sort of way—of how far back Sandy and my history stretched, of how one word could prompt a year’s worth of recollections. That made me feel better. Plus, I could tell that Alice really liked Sandy, and more important, how much Sandy liked Alice. Of course, I’d seen Sandy with boyfriends, but I hadn’t seen her as happy, ever, not even when she was talking about marrying Barton Albert. I figure, that’s what you want for your friends, that they find people who help them smile more.
Funny thing—Alice had also had a crush on the Colin Ashcroft character on General Hospital, way back when. To be accurate, she’d had a crush on Colin, then said that she found herself distracted by the Helen and Bart affair, and then by Helen.
“It was one of my early clues to myself,” Alice said. “But what a coincidence that you’ve got Colin Ashcroft sleeping across the hall. Have you messed around with him yet?”
Sandy must have nudged her under the table because Alice jumped a little, then turned to her.
“For God’s sake, what?” she asked.
“He’s a butthole,” Sandy said. “I told you that. I told you what he was like when I met him.”
“Maybe Leanne has decided to overlook his butthole tendencies, annoying though they may be. Hell, he’s all sorts of good-looking. And in that interview, he came across like a decent guy, all repentant and sensitive.”
“The thing is,” I told them, “he thinks I’m a hick.”
“Oh, please,” Sandy said. “Why would he think that? I told him you were prom queen.”
I shook my head and told her how I’d heard him on the phone.
“What a fucker,” Alice said.
“I can’t help being from Pinecob,” I said. Alice nodded.
I wanted to explain, but I wasn’t sure where to start. Sandy could vouch for me, how I had long planned on living somewhere else. One of the first things I remember doing with Sandy, right around the time we met, was making lists of where we were going to live, who we were going to marry, what we were going to be when we grew up. Some of the items never changed. For Sandy, it was living in New York City. From the time we were both eight, she swooned over the shiny Chrysler Building, even though she’d never been there. For me, it was Max Campbell. He always topped my list of whom I’d be willing to spend years with.
It grew to be a tradition of ours. At the end of each school year, Sandy and I would make new lists, without looking at the ones from the year before. One summer, I was crazy to see Nova Scotia. The next, I remember being certain that I would move to Colorado and become a large-animal veterinarian. Another year, I wanted to live in London and write devastatingly romantic folk songs. Then, the year we were both fourteen, we skipped the tradition. Other events had taken over my family, and I remember Sandy saying that we could always do it the following week. We didn’t, and we hadn’t.
I knew that working at the county courthouse hadn’t ever been on my list. I knew that living in Pinecob hadn’t been there, either. And I don’t think that Sandy ever planned to be a nurse. Not back then. But when the time comes, you work with the available choices, and some choices seem more available than others.
Alice reached out her hand and touched my hair. “You’ve got such beautiful hair, Leanne,” she said. “I love the color. I really do. But could I make a tiny little suggestion?”
I shrugged. “About my hair?”
“It’s just…well, I think, but it’s only my opinion of course, that you could do with a slightly different cut. Hell, you’ve got a great face—I’d kill for your cheekbones—but your hair’s maybe a few years back. What do you think, hon?”
“Maybe,” Sandy said, nodding. “Remember how Brennie used to do hers?” she asked me. “Sort of sleek and out of her face, but not feathered.”
I suddenly felt self-conscious.
“I’m not talking about anything drastic,” Alice said. “Your natural color is great. Just a little polish. Next time I come down, I’ll bring some magazines I got when I was in New York last time. They might give you some clothes ideas.”
“Clothes, too?” I asked. “I can’t afford anything new. He’s still going to think I’m a hick.”
“Why? Because you live in Pinecob?”
“Because I’ve only lived in Pinecob. And I can’t change that,” I said to Alice. Then I turned to Sandy. “At least you got to leave for nursing college.”
“Maybe it’s time you looked around again,” Sandy said. “You don’t want to be at the courthouse forever, do you? So there’s no reason to act like you do. Sometimes, you sort of act like you do.” Sandy looked sad as she said it, and I’m sure I didn’t look thrilled to hear her. You want friends to look out for you, but it still stings when they notice the exact things you’d prefer to gloss over. No, I didn’t want to be at the courthouse forever.
“He’s probably harping on you for, well, like you said Leanne—for being sort of grounded here,” Alice said. “Maybe focusing elsewhere isn’t a bad idea—just in general.”
“I focus on things outside of West Virginia,” I said.
“Like what?” Sandy asked. “Besides the Joshua Reed Fan Club, which you don’t need to talk to him about, that’s for sure.”
I just stared at my plate.
“Something to think about anyway,” she said, more gentle.
“I’m so bummed that he’s an ass,” Alice said. “Colin Ashcroft was so nice.”
“He’s a good actor, I guess,” I told her, glad to turn the conversation away from me and my flaws. “He can pretty much sound how he wants to sound. It’s creepy.”
“I wish there was something we could do,” Sandy mused.
“What, to fuck with him?” Alice asked.
“Not necessarily. I mean, I told him how cool you are, Leanne,” Sandy said.
“Why not fuck with him?” Alice wanted to know.
Sandy and I looked at each other
. Sandy shrugged.
“Well, how do you mean?” I asked Alice. “I mean, it can’t be anything illegal. This is a legal situation, him being in our house. I wouldn’t feel right about tricking him into going past his house-arrest boundaries so he’d be thrown in jail or something.”
Alice and Sandy looked surprised.
“What?” I asked. “Well, of course I’ve thought about it.”
“What were you thinking?” Sandy asked Alice.
“I don’t know. Just showing up, like I’m some crazy fan.”
“We had one of those already,” I told her. “It didn’t faze him.”
“Then what about a prank call? From his agent or something?” Alice suggested.
“Alice did a lot of acting in high school,” Sandy said.
Alice nodded. “I was quite the drama queen.”
“He never answers the phone,” I said.
“Then,” Alice said, still thinking, “what if you said that his agent had called? While he was in the shower or something.”
“And then what?” I asked.
Alice frowned. “What does this guy really want?” Alice asked. “What are his motivations?”
“To be somewhere other than my house, mostly. To get away from me,” I told her.
“But that’s not an option. What else?” Alice asked.
I thought about it. “I don’t know,” I said. “He likes people from L.A. And New York. People who think they’re cool, you know? And people in the movies—but not just anyone, not the extras or the assistants. Just the bigger names.”
“I’m getting an idea,” Alice said. “Someone from the movie set, maybe? What’s it called?”
“Musket Fire,” I told her. “Maybe.”
“Oh, my God, Alice, that would be perfect!” Sandy looked delighted. “Leanne, can we? Can we at least try? Why not, right?”
Mean Season Page 11
