“Well, sure,” Tommy said. “I said I’d try to make it.”
But to Tommy, it seemed like every season or month or week was too busy. Susan, of course, would come, with her kids. And Joshua would be there. The party would go on with or without Tommy, just like every other day did.
That night, Joshua asked if I might help him run lines for Musket Fire. I read the part of Elizabeth, who was the minister’s daughter—the shrew character, if you were going to compare Musket Fire to The Taming of the Shrew, like the California crowd always did. I tried to make her sound passionate and conflicted but not at all lusty. But Joshua couldn’t concentrate. He kept correcting his words and revising his accent, and finally gave up and threw the script down.
“You weren’t in any of Beau Ray’s yearbooks,” he said.
I nodded. That was on account of our age and grade differences.
“So can I see yours?” he asked me. I wanted to know why. “To get a better sense of you back then. You know, life history stuff.”
“Why?” I asked him again.
“Because I want to,” Joshua said.
I cut my eyes at him, like Momma did so often, trying to gauge whether it was truth.
“Plus it’s good acting practice. I’ve got to keep myself working. You heard me—I sucked when we ran lines just now.”
I didn’t think he’d sucked, but he had sounded a little more stilted than I’d expected.
“How is looking through my yearbooks practice?” I asked him.
“Show me and I’ll tell you.”
So I relented and he followed me upstairs. We sat on Vince’s bed and I opened up my senior-year annual.
“Choose someone,” Joshua said.
I asked who.
“Just anyone. Someone you knew.”
There were only seventy people in my graduating class, so I knew everyone, but Joshua sounded exasperated when I pointed this out. He poked a finger at a picture of a boy named Fletcher McCobb.
“Him,” he said. “Tell me about him.”
I stared into Fletcher McCobb’s smile. I wondered where he was right then.
“Fletcher had an older brother who went out with Susan a few times,” I started to say.
“Tell me about Fletcher. Not his brother.”
I started again. I told him that the McCobbs had moved to Pinecob when I was in sixth grade, and that Fletcher had had a black eye on his first day of school. I told him how the McCobbs had more money than most families in town, and that Fletcher was always sporting one bruise or another. Even when I was little, I knew that his family was the sort that got shushed over.
I told Joshua how Fletcher used to wear a denim shirt with patches made to look like red handkerchief fabric, and how in high school he’d had a motorcycle and had once dropped it on the asphalt just outside the Wilsons’ service station. I told him how Fletcher had joined the army straight out of high school, even though everyone figured he could have made more money working for his father. But Paulie had once done some work on the McCobb’s house, painting or some such, and I remembered him saying that Fletcher had been smart to enlist.
“Is that enough? How would that even help?” I asked.
“It does,” Joshua said, and he got serious. He started saying how every person has a particular way about them and that his job—being an actor—meant trying to recreate real people or make up new ones, and how it’s the particular details that jar a character loose from a script, making them into something that feels like life itself. Joshua told me how listening to stories about a perfect stranger, someone like Fletcher McCobb even, helped him remember all the different ways people grew up, so many-sided it could take your breath away. Sometimes, he said, after listening to someone describe a stranger—a friend or enemy or relative—he’d try to wear that person like a shirt, slipping into their posture or anger or laughter or manner of speaking. That’s the part that was practice.
“I didn’t know Fletcher too well,” I admitted. “I don’t remember the way he spoke. He was kind of shy. Kind of flinchy.”
“That’s okay,” Joshua said, standing up. “I’ll show you with Lionel.”
“Why?”
“It’s easy if I know the people in person.” Joshua grabbed a baseball cap from the closet and clamped it down over his hair and slung his thumbs through his belt loops. He inhaled deeply and seemed to inflate a little. In an instant, he’d captured Lionel’s way of standing exactly.
“Hey there, little lady,” Joshua drawled, taking half a swagger forward. “What draws you out of yonder holler?”
“Stop,” I said. “That’s scary. I mean, it’s good. It’s perfect.”
Joshua looked pleased. He took off the hat and stooped a little. He shuffled a few feet, then turned to me and pointed. “Do I know you?” he asked, all cantankerous now.
“The guy at the AA meeting,” I said.
“Homer,” Joshua said. Now he stood up straight. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and ran a hand through his hair. It was clear he was nervous—or acting nervous. “So, Leanne,” he said.
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said.
He picked up Vince’s stapler, then set it down, then looked around the room.
“I still don’t know. Someone nervous?”
“Max!” Joshua said, like it should have been obvious.
“But you made him look all fidgety.”
“He is,” Joshua said.
“No, he’s not,” I told him. “I don’t see that at all.”
“Oh, right. Max is perfect,” Joshua said, back inside his own voice. He came over to Vince’s bed and dropped on his stomach beside me. “So show me your skeletons.”
Joshua pointed to everyone in my high school class, and even some of my teachers, and for each one, made me tell a story or admit a crush or grudge or say what had become of the person.
“Him?” Joshua said, pointing at a picture of Butch McAfee, whom I’d admitted was my junior-year prom date.
“It’s not his best picture,” I explained.
“I hope not.” He glanced over at me. “You could do better.”
“Butch was nice. He sent me love poems.”
“Butch wanted to get into your pants,” Joshua said. I kicked him. “What? He was sixteen! That’s what sixteen-year-old guys want. Trust me. I was one.”
I frowned.
“It doesn’t mean that he didn’t mean what he wrote. Just that there was a motive.”
“They were really bad poems,” I admitted.
“Leanne,” Joshua said. “You make me want to get a van, Leanne.”
“Stop it,” I told him, but he only gained steam.
“For you I’m working on my tan, Leanne.”
“Go ahead then,” I said. “I’m not listening.”
“I’m making a romantic plan. I must insist on being your man. You know I am your favorite fan, Leanne.” Joshua laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes.
“They weren’t that bad,” I said, soon as I managed to stop laughing, too.
That was Joshua’s fortieth day.
The next time I went to work, I found myself watching Mr. Bellevue—as he answered his phone or commiserated with a courthouse secretary about the construction that required a detour onto Fountain Street. I made a list of things I hadn’t noticed before. He always straightened his tie before correcting someone. He kept only felt-tip pens in the mug on his desk. When he asked you a question, he’d look at you the whole time you were answering.
I didn’t know what such details told me. They surely didn’t draw an entire person. Could a stranger see Mr. Bellevue’s double-knotted laces and know that he was kind? Could you tell by his slightly shuffled walk that he was lonely? I wondered what Joshua Reed would make of the list. If I did the same for myself, what would that show?
I thought of Momma and how I might describe her. I thought of Tommy. I thought of Vince. I skimmed the list of Mr. Bellevue’s details and realized that I couldn�
��t make a like one for Vince. I’d lost the ability to describe him. When he was younger, before the accident, I could have done it by heart—the sound of his laugh, the way he’d toss a ball from one hand to the next. But now I wondered whether I would even recognize him, if I’d even recognize his voice, were he to step up to the counter and apply for a hunting permit.
“I know something you don’t,” Joshua said. It was Tuesday, that next week. He winked at Beau Ray.
“He knows something you don’t,” Beau Ray said.
“I doubt that,” I told them both. That Tuesday had been the first day of bass fishing season, and I was beat from dealing with license applications all day. “Momma home?”
“They’re out back,” Joshua said. “You don’t want to know what I know?”
“What?” I turned to him. “What do you know?”
“Maybe I won’t tell you,” he said. “Beau Ray, should I tell her?”
“Tell her,” Beau Ray said. He clapped his hands together.
“I should tell her who stopped by?”
“Who stopped by?” I asked.
“So now you want to know?” Joshua asked. I saw him wink at Beau Ray.
“Smax,” Beau Ray said.
“Max stopped by?” I asked.
“I told you she’d want to know,” Joshua said.
“Why did he stop by?” I asked. “Did he say?”
Joshua shrugged. “He asked if you were here, and when I said you weren’t, he didn’t seem terribly interested in keeping me company.”
“I was at the store,” Beau Ray said.
“What did he say?”
“Who? Beau Ray?” Joshua asked. “He said he was at the store.”
“You know who I mean,” I said.
“Oh, Max? What did Max say? Just to tell you he stopped by.” Then Joshua put on his best Josiah Whitcomb accent. “Leanne, I do believe you’re sweet on that fella,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t.
For one, Judy’d been right. I’d had a thing for Max pretty much since I was eight and he was twelve, and that’s a long time for anyone to fan a flame. Sure, my infatuation had waxed and waned at various times—like junior year when Butch was plying me with his bad poems. Or senior year, when I was positive I’d found my match in Howard Malkin (before I found out about him and Loreen). Or when I thought that Otto, who worked as assistant to the assistant county prosecutor, was almost certainly my Mr. Right. And of course I’d set myself to simmer all the time Max was married to Charlene. Like I said, I’m a pretty realistic person. I never figured I’d come out the winner in heart-to-heart combat with the likes of a former Miss Junior West Virginia.
But maybe I’d been simmering too long. Or, holding to the stovetop metaphor, maybe the pilot light had blinked out, but I’d overlooked it. Maybe what I’d taken for a slow burn was instead a long, covered cool-down. Sometimes I wondered if I liked Max because I’d always liked Max, and it was a habit, like chewing on the end of a pen.
Maybe Max would have been right for me a year earlier. Or even six months before. Maybe it was Joshua being there. In our fight on the Fourth of July, Joshua had said some cutting things about my life being small. Part of it, most of it even, had been hot blood talking. But some of his words had sunk in, more and more as the days passed. Did I really want to hunker down with someone who was never going to leave Pinecob? I’d had an ambitious to-do list before the bad luck settled over our house. If I fell for some guy who was never going to leave Pinecob…at least, that’s what I found myself itching about.
Timing really is everything, because of course all this started moving through my mind around the time Max seemed to be emerging from his Charlene fog. Sandy was fit to be tied when I stopped by her house late the same day Max had paid his visit.
“You’re impossible!” she said. “You did the exact same thing with Otto!”
“That’s totally different,” I explained. “I liked Otto from across the hall, and when he started talking to me a lot, that’s when I realized he had that smell I couldn’t stand. Max doesn’t smell anything like Otto. Max smells, well, clean.”
Sandy shrugged.
“You remember Brennie?” I asked her.
In high school, when Sandy and I were sophomores, Brennie Critchett was a senior and nearabout the most beautiful, have-it-together girl around. At the time, I thought she barely touched the ground. More than idolized her, I wanted to be her. I used to keep track of what she wore, then try to hunt out the same clothes. Of course, they never looked the same on me.
“Remember back when we were seniors, around Christmastime, and I saw her at the Winn-Dixie?” I asked Sandy.
She shrugged.
“She was walking with some other girl, and I snuck up behind and heard them talking about how Brennie had been kicked out of college for grades, because all she ever did was sit around and get stoned.”
Sandy slowly nodded, like she was remembering. “Oh right,” Sandy said. “So you think that because Max went out with Brennie a few times that if you go out with Max, he’s going to sit around and get stoned? Or you are?”
“I forgot that Max went out with her,” I said.
That wasn’t it, of course. Max had been, for me, a similar sort of pedestal crush, and I’d begun to wonder whether he wasn’t best left untested. As soon as the guy on a pedestal starts to return the favor, he grows way too human. He needs things, he whines, and it changes the balance. I knew that Max couldn’t always smell clean.
“What if it turns out he bores me? What if he’s a bad kisser?” I asked Sandy.
“You’re not serious!” Sandy said.
“Besides, I don’t even know whether he likes me at all. Maybe he’s been nice because I’m Beau Ray’s little sister, or because I’ve got Joshua Reed in my house, or because he feels bad for blowing me off three years back.”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.”
“He ran into traffic for a dog!” Sandy said. She sounded fed up. “Is this because of Joshua? Did he say something to you? Did he make a move?”
“No,” I said. But I did think of Joshua acting out Max, all fidgety. Max had always been the body of confidence to me. Had I been making that part up?
“Did you make a move?” Sandy pressed.
“No!” I said. “No one made any moves on anyone.” I stood up and paced Sandy’s bedroom. “But maybe. I don’t know.”
“What?” Sandy insisted. “Pull on that thread.”
“It’s just that, Joshua and I are finally getting along, you know?”
“And you think—”
“Let me do the pulling,” I told her. “It’s not what you think. He’s been really nice, recently. You know, interested in my life and family and asking about my job and helping me choose classes for next semester.”
“Classes? Plural?”
I nodded. “Judge Weintraub talked to Momma about it and she agreed. I’m going to go half-time,” I said.
“Finally!” Sandy said. “But back to Max.”
“So, right, Joshua’s been, you know, supportive. And don’t get me wrong—he’s never said anything down-mouth about Max. But he did say something that got me to thinking about whether I want to stay in Pinecob for that much longer.”
“And you think that if you start to date Max…”
“Not that we’d even last a month or anything, but what if I hang back on account of him and miss my chance? It’s hard enough to think about leaving when it’s just my family.”
“Where would you go to? New York?” Sandy asked.
I slumped down beside her on her bed. “I have no idea,” I said. I knew that Sandy was taking all this in and would spit back something I could use. She was good at that. She always figured things through.
“Well,” she said. “You don’t have to decide anything this minute. But there’s no way Max Campbell is a bad kisser.”
I didn’t call Max right away, af
ter he’d stopped by. My talk with Sandy hadn’t really helped me decide—except to decide not to decide—and that meant avoiding the whole decision-making process, including deciding to call Max. So I didn’t. Besides, Judy was due in town the next day, Wednesday, Joshua’s halfway mark, so there was cleaning after cleaning to do beforehand. Whenever Judy and Lars were around, Momma’s list of “Leanne’s Chores” got longer. I think she wanted to make sure that they were catered to but didn’t like them well enough to do any hostess work herself.
By the time Lars showed up Thursday morning, the chaos those two brought kept me distracted. They got a car to take them to Virginia and took pictures of the fields and old buildings where some of Musket Fire would take place. I wondered if I had passed any of the same spots on my dark Virginia drive. Then they spent hours taking Joshua through the pictures and reviewing script changes and making phone calls and trying to answer their cell phones, which would ring once and then conk out. The only place Judy’s cell phone seemed to work was in the trees out past our backyard.
Momma had written out a list of fancy party food to have on hand for their visit, and since Lars said he’d be willing to drive Joshua to AA that night, I figured I’d use the time to shop. I was checking what other, more normal food we might need when Judy appeared in the kitchen and offered to lend a hand and come along. I didn’t think anything of it, except that it was company and I liked that Judy was choosing to hang out with me special. So we got in the car and drove to the Winn-Dixie.
I didn’t see him in the managers’ office, but a guy in there confirmed that Max was working, so he had to be somewhere nearby. The guy in the office stared at Judy while he told me that, like she was something he’d never set eyes on before. It made me look twice at her, and I noticed that, sometime between her asking to come along and us arriving at the Winn-Dixie, she’d put on makeup.
We started shopping in the produce area. I pointed out where Marcy Thompson of Hollywood Express had cornered me against the apples, and I grabbed an extra bag of carrots for Beau Ray. We ran into Max in the juice aisle. He stood beside a clerk who’d spilled what looked like a bunch of juice concentrate boxes. The floor was covered with a deep purple glaze, and Max and the clerk were watching it spread. The clerk looked worried, but Max wore the beginnings of a grin.
Mean Season Page 18
