I raised my hand, but it seemed that he couldn’t see past Max’s cousin Lisa. Blue eyeshadow.
Joshua came bounding down the stairs. “I miss anything?” he asked. Then he looked at me and did a doubletake. “Don’t you look Left Bank tonight,” he said.
“What’s that?” Scooter asked.
“Leanne’s gone chic on us,” Joshua said.
Scooter looked over at me. “Since when’s a black T-shirt chic?” he asked.
Max interrupted to introduce Joshua to the Roanoke cousins, and Joshua did his charming act and asked all about Virginia and talked about Musket Fire and the character of Josiah Whitcomb and how the story was a mix of Taming of the Shrew and Gone with the Wind, which I’d heard about a hundred times by then. I felt about as chic as our old rug.
I hated being with myself in that sort of mood, much less a crowd of other people living it up. So I excused myself and headed back to Beau Ray’s room. The room had been his private domain nearly twelve years by then (he’d laid claim to it as soon as Tommy moved out). But he’d promised, when he first took it over, that as long as his door was open, I was allowed inside. That open-door policy had remained a constant, except during a couple of knockdown drag-outs, and since Beau Ray’s room was as far off as you could get from the din of the house and still be inside, I’d sought shelter in there a number of times. There and in his bathroom across the hall.
“Are you lonely?” It was Beau Ray. He sat on his bed, smiling at me. “Are you sad, Leanne?”
“No,” I told him. There was so much I never explained to Beau Ray, mostly because he tended to lose his ability to concentrate about thirty seconds into a conversation. Maybe because I felt that, on a lot of levels, his challenges loomed larger than anything I ever faced, even if he didn’t realize it. It was habit, by then, to give him the smaller version of everything. The abridged edition. “I’m a little tired,” I told him.
“You’re wearing a lot of the same color,” he said.
I nodded. “Is that bad?” I asked him.
“It’s not bad,” he said. “I wear all one color some days.”
I wasn’t sure that was the argument I wanted to hear.
“It’s crowded in our house tonight,” he said. “More girls.”
“That’s true.”
“I’m going to bring my pillow to lie on.”
“That’s more comfortable than the floor,” I told him.
He laughed. “You can’t lie on the floor,” Beau Ray said.
“Well, you can—” I started to say.
“For a whole movie?” he asked.
I told him that he was probably right. “You’re going to like this movie.”
“You’re going to like it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I might go out instead.”
Beau Ray frowned. “Go where?”
“Maybe just to get some milk. Just out. You stay and watch the movie. It’s a good movie. James Bond. And Joshua will be here.”
“Joshua lives here,” Beau Ray said.
“For a little while longer at least,” I agreed.
“Be back soon,” he said, and it sounded like a decision.
“Leanne? Beau Ray?” It was Lionel from the living room.
Even if I wasn’t going to watch, I’d have to walk by them to get out of the house. Whether I left out the front door or the back, I’d have to pass through the living room, and the guys and the matching blondes. I wished I could just stay in Beau Ray’s room, but I got the impression that nowhere in the house would let me breathe the way I wanted, not that night. I’d be able to hear the movie from every room.
“Coming!” I called out. I handed Beau Ray his pillow and we left his room.
They were waiting for us, Joshua in Dad’s old easy chair, and the girls on the long couch, with Max between them. Lionel and Paulie sat on the short couch, and looked up when we came in.
“You guys ready?” Lionel asked.
“Leanne has to go get milk,” Beau Ray said.
“Now?” It was Max. “Why?”
“Why don’t you start the movie?” I said. “Really. I forgot something. Earlier. I thought I’d go out for it now.”
“Now?” Max asked again.
“You going to a rave?” Paulie asked.
Lionel swatted him. “You don’t even know what a rave is,” he said.
“I’ve never been to a rave,” Lisa said. “Are they fun?”
“Jesus, let her go if she wants to go,” Joshua said.
“I won’t be long,” I said.
Lionel shrugged and started the film. Beau Ray set his pillow against the side of the long couch and sat down. I grabbed my keys and walked out.
There are some decisions that, when you’re making them, you’re pretty sure you could go either way. If anyone had piped up to say that they wanted me to stay, I’d probably have stayed. And since no one did, I left. But once I was outside, I knew that leaving was what I’d wanted. The way you feel your deepest desire when the coin is in the air. Even though you’ve already called heads, and even though you’ve said you couldn’t care less, suddenly, the coin is flipping around and you find yourself hoping for tails.
I drove into the center of Pinecob first, trying to think what to buy, so as to have had a good excuse for leaving in the first place. I thought about getting Beau Ray some ice cream. A prescription would have worked, except it was Sunday night and the pharmacy was closed. Indeed, a lot of Pinecob was closed up and turned off, so I headed toward the Potomac and drove alongside that slow river a while, until I crossed a big bridge announcing the borderline of Virginia. I’d driven there a couple of times in the week following Joshua’s arrest, but I wasn’t too familiar with the state, and past Harper’s Ferry, it was all foreign to me. But I kept on driving and listening to the radio, and singing along, loud as can be because it was dark and who was going to see me crooning like a fool? I kept going, sort of east some of the time, sort of south if I felt the urge. I passed schools and shopping malls and truck stops and fields, most of them dark. I passed a church all lit up, the parking lot overflowing onto the shoulder of the road. Finally, I pulled over at a strip mall to stretch my legs. I looked around. The stores there were the same as we had in Charles Town, but the land around was a lot flatter.
I looked at the gas gauge—I still had half a tank, more than enough to get me farther away, or if I turned around then, to get me home. I sat on the hood of the car, the engine warm and clicking beneath me, and looked into the dark ahead. I wondered whether, on the night he left, Vince’s mood had been the same as mine right then. I didn’t know if his leaving had been a spontaneous decision, if maybe he had been planning on going out for a soda or a drive, but with each mile told himself, just one mile more, until Pinecob was long gone behind him. That’s how I kept going whenever I went jogging. Just one step more. Just one tree more. Just one block more.
Or maybe he knew, from the moment he left, that he wasn’t coming back. I wondered if he’d floored the accelerator on the way out of town. Whether he’d said goodbye to anyone. Why hadn’t he said goodbye to anyone?
I found myself remembering an autumn day, back when I was six and Vince was eight. Vince’s class had gone on a field trip to Cedar Creek Battlefield Park. Momma had signed on as a parent-chaperone and had dragged me along for educational purposes, she said. After the tour was over, when the rest of the kids were eating their lunches, Vince found a stick and started playing like it was a sword, jabbing and swinging. I remember thinking that it was the best stick ever and that I wanted to play with it, too. I was reaching for it just as Vince wheeled around, and the stick poked me hard in the cheek. I started crying and Momma yelled at Vince something fierce and took the best stick ever and broke it in half.
Vince didn’t move a hair while Momma was hollering. It was like he was frozen. But as soon as Momma turned to tend to my face, he took off running, across the big field where the Civil War battle had raged, and on into the trees. Th
e battlefield was surrounded by woods and bounded on one side by the Shenandoah River. Beyond the boundaries of the park stood a forest and beyond that, the start of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
No one could find Vince. The teacher was looking and the park ranger, and I remember sitting in our car and listening to some of the kids from Vince’s class calling his name. In a panic, Momma telephoned my father, who drove over to the park straightaway. She was in tears by the time he arrived.
“He’ll be back,” Dad told Momma. Dad said that Vince was like a dog that needed time alone to lick his wounds. “You wait here,” he told Momma. “Leanne and I will find him.”
My father held my hand and we walked a path through the woods that sloped toward the Shenandoah River. At a fork, he turned to me and asked which way I thought Vince would have gone. I remember being scared to answer such an important question. I thought hard, then pointed at the river. I knew I wanted to see the river.
When we hit the water’s edge, we followed the river downstream and in a ways came upon a man then about my grandfather’s age. He sat on a folding stool, with a tackle box and a fishing pole. When he saw us, he nodded and motioned down the bank, maybe twenty feet farther on. Vince was sitting there quietly, fishing.
When Dad called out his name, Vince gave a start, like he was waking up. He reeled in his fishing line, stood up, and walked over.
“I’m sorry for hurting your face,” Vince told me. “I didn’t mean to.”
Dad put his hand on Vince’s shoulder. “Your momma’s worried over you,” he said. “We’d best get along back.”
Vince nodded and gave his fishing pole back to the old man.
“I been watching him,” the man told my father.
I thought about that man on and off as I was growing up. I used to wonder what he’d thought, seeing Vince emerge onto the bank in tears, like some runaway prince. I wished I could ask him. Whenever I asked Vince to tell the story, he claimed he couldn’t remember much, other than his hook, baited with American cheese, sinking into the green river water.
There, in the roadway dark of Somewhere, Virginia, I thought about the old man. Nearly twenty years had passed so I figured that he probably had, too. And now my dad was dead and Vince was gone again. This time, we hadn’t found him. He hadn’t been found or hadn’t let himself be found. Or maybe the worst, he couldn’t be.
Somewhere in Virginia, I looked out at the road, both ends disappearing into the dark on either side of the strip mall. Somewhere else in the state, my brother Tommy was going about his life. Somewhere, back behind me, Beau Ray and the others were watching James Bond. I wondered who was having a better time, those who left or those who remained. My parents had lived out their whole lives in West Virginia, and that wasn’t so unusual. A lot of folks lived all their years within a few miles of where they grew up. I figured it was people like Joshua who skewed the results—because looking at Pinecob, it seemed like most everyone had always been there and would always be there. I just had to figure out whether I’d be one of them. And if I wasn’t, then when and to where?
I didn’t even know where I was, just then, and that didn’t seem a fortuitous way to start the decision-making process. So I found a map in the glove compartment and located the town where I’d pulled over. It was a lot farther into Virginia than I’d expected. Maybe it was just that my mind had been elsewhere, but part of me wanted to take it as a sign. I’d traveled that far, singing along with the radio and watching fields pass. I might go even farther if I had a plan.
I wondered whether the same realization had hit Vince. A strip mall, a map. Maybe he’d pulled over to figure out where he was and seen how far he’d gone. I thought about California, where people so often went to reinvent themselves. Who said I couldn’t do the same thing? What would happen if I just didn’t go back? But then I thought about Beau Ray and the movie I was missing in our living room, and I knew I couldn’t, not like that at least.
After a while, I turned the car around and headed back toward Pinecob. It took longer than I thought it would. There was construction along the route the map said was the shortest. And also I stopped to get Beau Ray some ice cream. By the time I got back, the house was dark. Everyone had gone.
Chapter 12
Day 36: the Fourth of July
Our backyard in Pinecob looked like this: you’d come out of the house through a sliding door in the back of the dining room, onto a deck Tommy had built years before. Nothing big, but it held a couple of chairs and one of those plastic all-weather tables. Then two steps down, you’d be in the backyard, with grass that Beau Ray kept mowed. Our backyard was much bigger than our front. It ran the length of the house and was maybe twenty-five, thirty feet across. At the far side stood a cluster of pine and oak trees that had felt to me like a deep, dark forest when I was little. Once I was older, it seemed more like a glen, protected and shady but tame, so that I stopped expecting to run across Bambi or Thumper in there.
A narrow ditch paralleled the far side of the trees, and after that rolled the big expanse of Brown’s Field. Brown’s Field was always called that, though officially its name was “the West Ridge field” and it was county land, facts I learned through my job at the clerk’s office. At the far edge of the field sat the Pinecob Elks Lodge and VFW building.
All the time I’d lived there, people rarely hung out in Brown’s Field. Teenagers would mess around in there on and off after dark (at least, I did, when I was one), and on Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, the men from the VFW would host a big spaghetti dinner and bingo raffle, and pull tables out to the field’s edge. The only other time it regularly saw traffic was on the Fourth of July. The way the field sloped made it a good place to watch the fireworks that were annually set off over at the elementary school.
Beau Ray loved fireworks, and we’d spent many July fourths over at Brown’s, a blanket spread out on the gangly grass. That’s what I’d planned to do that year, too, though I’d figured on using lounge chairs instead of the usual blankets, since that Fourth of July was set to be soggy. It had rained the whole day before, and the sun had only broken through around three on the afternoon of the Fourth. Momma had gone to Elkins to visit Susan and the kids, so I was expected to stick close to home.
“Leanne, I expect you to keep the house from burning down” was how Momma said goodbye. You might think that we kept a fire stoked twenty-four hours by the frequency of that admonition. But far as I knew, our family hadn’t ever suffered a fire, and there was no great Pinecob burn to warrant her worry either. Paulie’s family once lost an outbuilding to fire, but that was because his father had been burning trash in a barrel, gone inside for a cold one and got distracted by a playoff football game on the television (another reason Momma had for disliking television). Paulie’s father hadn’t even known the building was on fire until a neighbor came knocking. Paulie’s mother was in charge of all trash burning after that—but they lived on a farm outside of town, so I kind of figured things ran different over there. We took our trash to the dump.
On the morning of the Fourth, Momma packed up early for the trip to Elkins, saying she’d be back the next afternoon. She didn’t mention it to me, but I knew she was picking up Judge Weintraub on her way out of town. I’d overheard her say so when she was on the phone with Susan. It bugged me that she hadn’t said anything to me. She didn’t even give me the chance to be gracious and adult about it.
I haven’t taken a poll or anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find other youngest kids who’ve had a hard time proving themselves grown-up to their family. To my mind, I should have had an easier time of it, considering all the mothering I was expected to do with Beau Ray. But there were certain things that Momma only talked to Susan about, because Susan was older and had had kids young, like Momma had, and because she had a husband. I figured such things seemed to Momma like proof of being fully human.
Anyhow, around five, Momma was long gone to Elkins and I was about to put a load of laundry in
the washer when the doorbell rang. Beau Ray answered it and in walked Lionel and Scooter. They were carrying a cooler and paper bags full of steaks and hot dogs and buns.
“Hey, Leanne,” Lionel said. “Happy Fourth.”
“What’re you doing here?” I asked him.
“We’re barbecuing, right? Five o’clock,” he said.
“I love bar-cue!” Beau Ray said. He looked thrilled.
“We are?” I asked. That was one more thing I hadn’t heard about, but I told Lionel to make himself comfortable—he already knew where everything was kept. I said I’d be right back.
Joshua was down in the basement. As I was walking down the stairs, I heard the doorbell ring again.
“Joshua,” I said to him.
He was looking at something on the computer. Without turning from the screen, he held up one hand in a gesture that said hush up and wait.
“Joshua,” I said again.
“Just a sec,” he said, and I waited while he finished whatever he was reading. “Okay. Yeah? What is it?”
“You tell me,” I said. “Did you invite people over?”
“Huh?” He turned around to face me. He looked particularly sour.
“Did you invite people—Lionel, Scooter, I don’t know who all—over? To barbecue today?”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Yeah, last week.” He started to turn back to the computer, but I wouldn’t let him.
“Were you going to tell me?” I asked him.
He glanced over at me and rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think it was a big deal,” he said. He sighed. “Are you making it a big deal?”
“Are you going to go upstairs?”
“Of course,” he said. But he tried to turn back to the computer again. “I’ll be up in a little while,” he said.
I swear, I thought I hadn’t heard him right. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked him. I mean, say you go out to eat and you order the steak and the person you’re with orders the chicken. Both of the meals arrive, and you taste your steak and don’t like it. Do you make the other person eat your steak simply because you ordered wrong? I felt like Joshua had just grabbed my day and started in on it. I’d had in mind a mellow Fourth of July, with lounge chairs in Brown’s Field, watching fireflies and fireworks blink all together. I stood there, trying to figure out what had just happened and whether I suddenly had to be all social. Swear to God, Joshua could make me feel like the least mellow person alive.
Mean Season Page 14
