“What’s the big deal?” Joshua asked me.
“For one, you didn’t ask. And for two, they’re your guests. And they’re here.”
He stood up so quickly that his chair bumped the back of his legs and fell over. He didn’t move to pick it up. I could tell he was pissed but so was I.
“Fine,” he said as he brushed past me and headed up the stairs.
“Wait, so now I’m the bitch?” I yelled after him, but he didn’t answer. I took that for a yes.
I stood there in the basement, looking at the upended chair, on its back like a dead thing. I listened to the sound of feet and conversation above me and wondered what was the point. I’d felt the same way the first night Joshua had been there, when I’d wondered how I would ever survive the summer. Now we were more than a third of the way through, and I was still trying to figure it out. In the most recent couple of weeks, there’d been a few times when I’d felt like we’d struck a truce. And then something like what had just happened would happen, and I would wonder how a stranger could make me feel so out of place in my own home. I felt like I was flying below the radar, going unnoticed in my own life. I was almost embarrassed that I’d ever imagined Joshua and me becoming friends.
I leaned up against the Ping-Pong table and stared at the wall calendar that hadn’t yet been changed from June. The computer was still on.
“Hey, sunshine. You waiting for me to kick your ass in Ping-Pong?”
I turned around and saw Max smiling. “No,” I said.
He frowned. “Uh-oh. Serious mood,” he said. He went over to Joshua’s chair, looked at it a moment, then righted it and tucked it back beneath the desk. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m fine. So how was the movie last Sunday?”
“Oh, right,” Max said. “You never came back.”
I felt my face redden when he said that. I guess I’d been hoping that he’d wondered about it all week. But it seemed like he’d forgotten I hadn’t been there until I reminded him. I felt about as appealing as a spotty mushroom.
“Where’d you go anyhow?” Max asked.
“Just errands. Was the movie good?”
He nodded. “For James Bond, it was okay. Laura and Lisa were thrilled to meet Josh,” he said. “I have a feeling they might find a reason to visit me again real soon.”
He twirled a Ping-Pong paddle, then found a dusty ball on the floor and hit it over to me. I caught it in one hand. Such a relief when a guy you like tosses a ball or a Frisbee or something of that sort and you manage to catch it without some huge lunge or bobble. Especially when the rest of your moves aren’t that graceful.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?” Max asked.
I didn’t know what he was talking about. “You?” I asked him. “No. Why?”
“First you cut out for the movie, and then I only heard about this barbecue from Lionel.”
“You knew about it before I did,” I told him. I tossed the Ping-Pong ball back and he lobbed it into the ceiling. “Maybe Joshua wanted to surprise me.”
“Gotcha.” He put the paddle down. “Let’s go up. Paulie brought beer and a kiddie pool, and Scooter has a whole mess of bottle rockets,” he said. “It’ll be fun. We’ll make it fun.”
Apparently, Joshua had told Lionel to invite whomever. Apparently, he’d said that he wanted to meet a lot of new people. By five-thirty, there were maybe thirty folks in the backyard, grilling food, dunking their feet in Paulie’s pool and drinking beer and whatever else they’d carried in. An hour later, there was near to twice that many, and a steady stream of randoms were finding their way through the trees from Brown’s Field. In a bigger town, that might have become a problem, but this was Pinecob.
Of course, it turned out that I knew or least recognized most of them—acquaintances from high school I saw around town, friends of Lionel’s I hadn’t seen since we’d stopped dating, friends of friends of friends. And it had turned into one of those perfect early evenings of summer, almost but not quite too hot, so moods stayed up and people kept cool by spraying each other with a hose that someone had dragged out to fill the kiddie pool. Plus Lionel, bless his heart, had put a sign in the driveway, telling people to walk around to the backyard. And he’d locked the front door, which kept most people out of the house.
“Don’t think I don’t remember your momma,” he said. “Anything happens and you can blame me. She likes me.”
Scooter took charge of the grill, and I was impressed to see that there was a whole setup of coleslaw and potato salad and ketchup and mustard and relish and paper plates and plastic forks.
“You really didn’t know about this?” Max asked. “Maybe Joshua did organize it to surprise you. I heard he’s footing the bill for it.”
I wasn’t convinced. “Maybe,” I said.
“Looks like he’s having fun anyhow,” Max said.
Joshua was standing with three women, who cocked their heads and played with their hair as he held forth about something. A fourth approached and handed him a drink. He took a gulp and said something that made the girls giggle. No doubt, he could have recited state capitals and they’d have been cooing.
“He’s not supposed to be drinking. Alcohol, I mean,” I said to Max.
“Maybe it’s soda.”
“Whatever. His party, his life,” I said.
Who came up to me not ten minutes later but Loreen Dunbar. Loreen: Buccaneer waitress, Potomac Springs Senior High graduate, and before then, skank who went down on Howard Malkin while he and I were dating. Sure, it was years back, but since we hadn’t been close beforehand and hadn’t spoken much after, that betrayal remained the most obvious thing Loreen and I had in common.
Loreen came bopping up to me with Paulie on her tail. It looked to me like he was trying to score, but her posture said that he wouldn’t, not that night, not unless something changed her mind. I found myself marginally more impressed with her because of that.
“Paulie, give me a minute with Leanne, will you?” Loreen said, and he shrunk off. “Leanne. Great party,” she said.
“Thanks.” I asked if the Buccaneer was closed for the Fourth and Loreen nodded.
“I don’t think I’ve been over here since third grade,” she said. “Remember your party?”
I nodded. She’d never have been to our house if Momma hadn’t invited everyone in my class over for my eighth birthday.
“It hasn’t changed much,” Loreen said. “That deck wasn’t there.”
“Tommy built it,” I told her, just to say something.
Loreen shifted around a bit, like her skirt was biting at her waistline. She looked at her watch, then back to me. “You still hate me?” she asked, all of a sudden.
I felt myself freeze and get hot at the same time. She didn’t look mad, just curious. I took a quick internal inventory.
“No,” I said, slowly, like I was listening to myself as the answer came out, trying to figure out if it was correct. “That wouldn’t make much sense.”
“Oh,” Loreen said.
“But I don’t like what you did, even if it was a while back.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not something I brag to anyone about. I’m sorry it happened.”
I nodded. Part of me started to feel bad for having referred to her as a skank all those years. I told myself that maybe I wouldn’t have done that if she’d said all this sooner.
“It was a long time ago,” I said. “I don’t even know where Howard is. So it seems silly to keep on fighting over him.”
“Last I heard, he was living in Martinsburg,” Loreen said.
I think I shrugged.
“But besides, look at you now, living with a movie star.”
“Only literally,” I said. “He’s more a houseguest. Or house-arrest guest, you could say.”
“Man, if Joshua Reed was living in my apartment, I’d be all over him, night and day.”
I smiled at her and wished I had a beer. I thought maybe skank had been accu
rate after all.
“Max Campbell is sure looking good. I been thinking about asking him out, myself,” Loreen went on. “We talk whenever he comes into the Buck.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “What would you ask him to do?”
Loreen looked at me funny. “I don’t know. The usual, I guess.”
I wondered what her usual was. “I thought he was still hung up on Charlene,” I said. “I always hear that.”
Loreen frowned. “You think?” she asked. “I guess, maybe. But I see him out. Not so often as Lionel or Paulie, but out.”
“You see him with girls out?” I asked.
Loreen shrugged. “But you know how they say that the best cure for a girl is another girl,” Loreen said.
“Who says that?” I asked.
“It’s just a saying,” she said.
I figured I was pretty much done talking to Loreen for the night, so I told her that I needed a beer, and she nodded and let me walk away. On the way to the beer cooler, I looked around for Max, but I didn’t see him anywhere.
“So you having a good time?” Lionel asked. He’d come up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Josh mentioned you were kind of tense,” he said, kneading his fingers around.
“I’m not tense,” I said. But I think getting defensive like that kind of proved it.
“Hey, if it’s about the party,” Lionel said. “I didn’t realize you didn’t know. Sorry about that. It wasn’t meant to be a surprise.”
He kept massaging my shoulders. I remembered as he did how Lionel was one of those too-hard massagers. There was too much kneading and pinching, so that I always ended feeling more wound up than before he began.
“You guys really brought the works, didn’t you? Down to my favorite mustard.”
“That was me,” Lionel said, and I took the opportunity to turn all the way around, so I could face him, but also so he would have to let go of my shoulders.
“Hey, thanks, Lionel,” I said. “Nice of you to remember.”
“Anything for you, little lady,” he said. He said it with a drawl, like he was John Wayne or someone. I winced. Lionel always used that twang when he was giving a compliment or gearing up to be sweet. It was like he had to put on an act if he was going to be gentle. Like, the real Lionel, the manly Lionel, would never be caught dead saying “you matter to me.” Instead, some twangy alter-ego was sent in to do the job. I didn’t like it when we were dating, and I wasn’t in the place for him to be sweet again. I liked Lionel and all, but I’d done enough treading water. That much I knew.
“Leanne and Lionel,” Beau Ray said. He was walking by, and somehow he managed to sing that out and stuff a hotdog into his mouth at the same time.
“Aw, Beau Ray, can’t a girl talk to an old flame without it meaning anything?” I asked. But it gave me an excuse to slip out of my one-on-one with Lionel. Beau Ray was fighting a summer cold that had socked him with an ear infection, so I told Lionel that I had to go get my brother’s medicine. Lionel said he’d catch up with me later.
Scooter cornered me next, but all he wanted to know was where was Sandy. Scooter’d had a thing for Sandy going on four years at that point, but the barbecue was the first time I’d talked to him alone since finding out that Sandy wasn’t ever likely to return his affections. Maybe I’d always known that Scooter was out of luck, but Alice was real confirmation.
“So Sandy’s not coming? I sure as heck wish you’d known about this party,” Scooter said. “Reckon you’d have invited her. I guess I should have called her personal.”
“I think she made plans a few weeks ago,” I told him. “She probably couldn’t have come anyhow.”
“She ain’t been around much this summer,” he said. “You still see her a lot?”
“On and off. You know, she’s working in emergency now. I think she needs a lot more down time.”
“She seeing anyone, do you know?” Scooter asked. “Oh, hey Josh,” he said.
I looked up to see Joshua smiling unsteadily at the both of us.
“Is who seeing anyone? Leanne?” he asked.
“Have you met Leanne’s friend Sandy?” Scooter asked.
“Have I ever,” Joshua said. “Too bad she’s playing on the other team,” he said. “Or—wait—is she on my team? We’re on the same team. I think that’s right.” He swayed a little bit.
“What’s that?” Scooter asked. “What team is that?”
“Joshua’s just kidding around,” I said. “You know, he met Sandy early on, and they talked all about baseball.” I gave Joshua my best shut-up stare. He didn’t so much shut up as wander off, which worked just as well. I smiled at Scooter.
“She likes baseball?” Scooter said. “Maybe I should invite her to a game.”
I watched him wander back to the grill to add another round of sausages. I’d always liked the fact that Scooter would talk about how much he liked Sandy. I might talk to Sandy about how much I liked Max, but it scared me to death to think about saying anything like that to his face. But I knew that if Sandy had been at the party, Scooter would have been telling her the same thing he told me. He put himself out there. I was sorry that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted, but then, I figured, who did? What percentage?
The heat and light of the day were both fading, and it was getting on time for the fireworks. I sat down on a corner of the deck, my legs swinging off.
“Mind if I sit?” Max asked, then dropped beside me before I could answer. He took a sip of his beer and looked out toward the trees and Brown’s Field. “Lots of people out tonight,” he said.
“You having a good time?” I asked him. “Everyone being nice to you?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t they be?”
I shrugged.
“I’ve seen a lot of people I hadn’t in a while. Loreen’s sure in fine form,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “Why would you say that?”
Max looked like he wasn’t sure what he should say next. “You two buddies now?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I talked to her for a little while. That’s all.”
“Huh. I never thought the two of you were tight. She probably had too much to drink, that’s all,” he said. “It’s nothing. Forget it. You like the Fourth?” he asked.
I told him that I liked the general lack of build-up, how it’s just one day. The fifth and everything’s gone back to normal.
“That’s not a very celebratory attitude,” Max said. “It’s our country’s birthday, after all.”
“I got Beau Ray’s birthday at the month’s end. That’s enough.”
From where Max and I sat, I knew we’d only see the fireworks now and again, the brightest ones that shone through the leaves, or those that shot so high they cleared the tops of the trees. I didn’t want to move though. I liked sitting next to him.
I looked down the length of our yard at all the people milling around, talking, laughing, drinking, and I suddenly hit up against a wave of melancholy, smack dead on. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed really hard, so hard that you go silent and your stomach muscles feel like they’re going to give. I turned to Max.
“Am I a bitch?” I asked him.
“What?” he said. He laughed a little, then looked at me harder. “Why are you asking me that?”
“You’ve known me forever. Do you think I take things too seriously? Am I a downer? Am I uptight?”
“Is this about the barbecue?” Max asked.
“You know, I was fine before all this happened. Wasn’t I?”
“Sure you were,” Max said. “You’ve always been.”
“Sure I was. I was fine. I was doing my job. I was going to school. I was happy. Or at least fine.”
Max nodded.
“And now I’ve got this movie star in my house that everyone’s crazy about and I’m the bad guy all the time. Or a loser. Or a hillbilly.”
“You’re not the bad guy,” Max said. “I’m sure there’s a lot
that you see that other people don’t see.”
“There is,” I told him. “You have no idea.”
Max smiled. “You’re not a bitch, or a loser, or a hillbilly,” he said. “Maybe you’re just tired.”
I was very aware of the way our feet and ankles bumped, as both of us swung our legs off the deck. He kept looking at me, and I thought that I noticed him lean in a little bit, so I leaned in a little bit. Most of me was trying to remain all calm, but inside my head, there was this circus of voices saying something like “Oh my God! You’re practically kissing Max Campbell!”
But then there was a shriek from someone in the crowd. I thought that the fireworks must have started, but they hadn’t, not yet. Max suddenly turned around, so I pulled back. I could see people pointing to our roof, to someone who was up on it.
There’s not much to say about the roof of our house on Prospect Street, except that it was slanted, not steep, but not shallow either. I’d been up there only once, when I was a kid and my dad was fixing a leak. I remember holding nails in my hand, and handing them to him one by one each time he asked. I remember him telling me to be very careful because the tiles could get slippery, and there wasn’t much to grab if you fell.
“Joshua Reed’s on the roof!” someone said.
I stood up. “Hey!” I called out to no one in particular. I left the deck and walked over to where the figure was standing on our roof. “Hey!” I called up to him.
It was Joshua all right. He looked down at me and bobbled a bit.
“Hey, Leanne, favorite fan,” he called down. “Come on up. View’s great up here.”
“How did you get up there?” I asked, then saw a ladder leaning against the side of the house.
“Come on up,” he said again.
Mean Season Page 15
