Mean Season

by Heather Cochran

  “It must be going well, then. I think Sasha has a crush on you.”

  “I think you’re jealous.”

  “Not of him.” I asked Max if he knew yet when he’d be flying west.

  “Wednesday, I think. I can’t believe I’m actually going to get on a plane. I hope I can do it.”

  “Of course you can do it,” I told him. “Will you be coming back through Pinecob first?”

  “Yeah, and then I’ll leave when Judy does. Hey, what do you think of Judy, anyhow? I never really asked you about her. I never figured she’d suddenly come to matter so much.”

  “She’s good at her job,” I said. I didn’t think it was my place to tell him any different. I didn’t want to jeopardize anything. “I don’t really know her that well. I mostly know her on the phone, but I think in person, she’s different.”

  “She seems really nice.”

  “I know,” I said. “She met… I think she liked Charlene,” I said.

  “I don’t want to talk about Charlene,” Max said. “I told you.”

  “I know.”

  “I was thinking how I want to kiss you again,” he said.

  I blushed into the phone. “You do?”

  “But for longer. Just, more.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just okay?” he asked.

  “More than okay,” I said.

  “Good. So I’ll be back Wednesday some time. I’ll call or stop by or something.”

  I told him that I’d be waiting.

  Chapter 17

  All I Didn’t Know

  I hated waiting for Max to return. I wanted to see him again. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to get down to the business of him being my boyfriend, to make it an official thing. One kiss was great, but it was still just one kiss, the start but not the thing itself. There are plenty of guys out there I’ve kissed only once.

  Monday night, I was trying to read, to get my mind off of him. And off of Beau Ray and the football he’d brought to Elkins with him, which Joshua still hadn’t given me a straight answer about. Sitting on my bed, I could hear Joshua in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. Times like that, things felt intimate. As soon as I heard him, I put my book down and listened. Who’d have thought, even six months before, that I’d be sitting there, listening to Joshua Reed brush his teeth. He’d been with us more than two months at that point, but it still seemed something magical strange at times. On the flip side, of course Joshua Reed brushed his teeth. He was Joshua Reed, movie star and all, but he was also just a guy practicing good dental hygiene.

  I turned back to my book as soon as I heard him twist off the taps, so as not to seem too weird and stalky. He stuck his head in my bedroom doorway.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Sleep well,” I said, and he nodded. I looked at my window and thought about Max again. Then I heard a noise from Joshua’s room, a panicked, gasping sort of chirrup.

  “Leanne!” I heard him say.

  I scrambled out of bed and ran across the hall. He was standing stiff up against the doorjamb, staring at the window. I probably gasped, too, seeing a person there. A face with a beard. A man’s face that, for a moment, I thought looked familiar. But it was a second before I could react.

  “We’re posted no trespassing!” Joshua yelled. He pointed his finger at the bearded man, but me, I reached out my hand. The man looked at it, but when I took a step forward, he seemed to startle and hustled down the ladder he’d been standing on.

  “That’s right. Get lost!” Joshua said. “Goddamn invasion of privacy. Jesus! I could have been doing anything!”

  “Wait!” I said, and turned and ran from the room, down the stairs, and back toward the dining room and the backyard. But the man was down the ladder by the time I reached the sliding doors. He’d disappeared into the trees by the time I got them open.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, don’t go!” I couldn’t see anyone, and didn’t know if he could hear me. “Was that you? Will you come back?” I listened for any sound from the woods, but heard only crickets and wind. “Vince?” I called out.

  I sat on the deck steps and stared into the trees until a padding of feet told me Joshua had followed me downstairs. He sat next to me and looked out across the yard.

  “You don’t think that was Vince?” he asked.

  “I did. At first,” I said. “But I’m not sure. You’ve seen pictures of him. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I figured it was some freak fan or something. Did you recognize him? For sure?”

  I shook my head. The truth was, I hadn’t. Something about the bearded man felt familiar, but he could have been a fan who vaguely resembled Vince. Or a rogue tabloid stringer. Or maybe I’d seen him at one of Joshua’s AA meetings. Or in the Winn-Dixie.

  “Has Vince ever done that before? Shown up at the house?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t know. No one’s been in his room for ages.”

  “Have you heard from him recently?”

  “Not for years.”

  “We should ask Judy if she’s gotten any weird fan mail in the past month or so.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “If it was Vince, is he unstable? Would he be dangerous?” Joshua asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It probably wasn’t him.”

  “I wonder if he had anything to do with that creepy Nicolette chick who showed up here,” Joshua said.

  “I doubt it,” I told him. That was the one thing I was certain of.

  “Why is our ladder up against Vince’s room?” Momma asked at breakfast. I could see Joshua watching me.

  “I was cleaning that window,” I told her. “I forgot to put it away.”

  “Do it today, would you?” Momma said. “It could fall. Someone could get hurt.”

  I told her I would.

  Later, at work, Mr. Bellevue mentioned that a man had stopped by and asked for me.

  “What man?”

  “Some guy. About your age, maybe. He didn’t leave his name.”

  I asked what the guy had looked like. “Did he have a beard?”

  “Nah. No beard. But your color hair. Sort of wiry.” That might describe Vince, as well as about a million other people. Mr. Bellevue motioned with one of his felt-tip pens. “Maybe you’re getting your own fan club.”

  I smiled at him. In the light of morning, the bearded man seemed most likely another fan with boundary issues, even if he had looked a little like my missing brother.

  Of course, I wanted to believe it had been Vince. I wanted him to come back. I wanted all of my family to come back. Joshua was right, everyone had left Pinecob. Even Beau Ray did—his fall had taken a huge part of him away from us. Everyone had left but me and Momma, and she wasn’t even around too often in those days. It got me to thinking. Maybe the door was still open, if I could figure out where I wanted to go once I walked out of it.

  At home that evening, I thought, I have to ask. I couldn’t just leave it to wondering.

  “When was the last time you heard from Vince?” I asked.

  Momma was piecing squares for a new quilt, sitting in the living room beside Judge Weintraub. She looked up at me, then over at the judge, like she was trying to tell me not to ask such a thing in front of him.

  “He’s practically family,” I said. I rocked back and forth in Dad’s old easy chair.

  “Why, thank you, Leanne,” the judge said. But he stood all the same. “I think I left something in the bedroom,” he said and climbed the stairs. Momma turned back to her quilting.

  “Well?” I asked her.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean why?” I asked. “Have you heard from him recently? Have you seen him?”

  “Leanne, now you listen to me. You got to get over thinking Vince is coming back,” Momma said. “You got to let him go.”

  I asked Momma how she could sound so certain, like she wasn’t just guessing. Momma put aside
her squares.

  “Heavens when was it…? Maybe seven years ago now, September, we got a phone call here at the house. From the police. You were at school.”

  “The police? You never told me this,” I said.

  “I’m telling you now. I meant to for years, and then…I guess it became something you didn’t need to know. Leanne, I know how you were about him.”

  “You were the same way,” I reminded her.

  “That’s how come I knew.”

  “What did they say? The phone call?” I tried to think back seven years. I’d been seventeen, maybe eighteen. Around September, I’d been starting my applications for college.

  Momma looked like she had to gather her strength. “The policeman who called, he said they’d found a body in some building that was getting torn down, somewhere in Kansas. They didn’t have much to go on for ID, because he’d been dead some time, but they found a ring on the body. You remember Vince’s class ring?”

  I felt a chill pass through me, like something dead had flown through the room. I wondered if it was Vince, or maybe my father, trying to act the shield.

  “It was his? I mean, did they know for sure it was his?”

  Momma nodded.

  “But did they know for sure it was Vince?”

  Momma shrugged. “They didn’t—they don’t—know that it wasn’t. And Vince loved that ring of his.”

  “But you don’t know. It could have been someone else,” I said.

  “Leanne,” Momma said, strong enough that I had to look at her. “I can’t do this. It was hard enough back then. I had to make a choice.”

  I thought back to that September. It was the beginning of the period Momma referred to as her unraveleds, the beginning of those long, mean seasons of time. I wished she had told me about the phone call. I’d been so frustrated—quietly, but still frustrated as heck—by her weakness back then, a weakness that sucked every bit of light from our house. But here she’d been trying to keep me strong, trying to keep at least one of us strong.

  “I know your daddy never liked secrets,” Momma said. “But I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid you’d do something crazy. Maybe run off to Kansas. They said he’d been shot through the head. Fast, at least. I tell myself that.”

  Part of me nearly broke in two right then, but another part of me now clung to the man in the window. Why couldn’t it have been Vince?

  “But what if it wasn’t him? Maybe Vince had sold that ring, did you think about that? Or maybe it got stolen. Maybe he’s still alive,” I said.

  “I hoped. But the police said it was a good match, age and hair color. I don’t know, Leanne. Him being alive, that would be a gift from above, but God’s been down on us Gitlins for a while now, don’t you think?” Momma asked. “I couldn’t hold on to that. I can’t. I still can’t.” Momma reached over and patted my hand. “I should have told you sooner.”

  “You should have,” I said.

  Momma looked far off. “You want to protect your children,” she said. “Even when they’re not children no longer, you still think you can, maybe, make things not hurt so bad.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I couldn’t protect my youngest boy,” Momma said. “That near to killed me, I’ll tell you. And there you were, my baby. How could I talk about this thing? But Bill says I got to remember how old you are, even if I still see a six-year-old when I look at you.”

  “You still see a six-year-old?”

  “Crying your eyes out when your tadpoles died, of course I do. You feel things real strong, Leanne, even if you pretend you don’t. You’re my girl that way.”

  I just nodded.

  “You know, I really appreciate how you’ve been getting on with Bill. Especially with what your sister says.”

  “Susan doesn’t like him?” I asked.

  “He’s not a churchgoer. Well, to her church,” Momma said. “She keeps calling it a character flaw. Like she’s so perfect.”

  “Susan doesn’t live here,” I said.

  Momma smiled. “You going to be okay?” she asked.

  I shrugged. I honestly didn’t know.

  Chapter 18

  To Those Who Wait

  I put in a call to Max’s parents on Wednesday when I got home from work, and I left word that I’d be around our house all evening. I couldn’t wait to see him, but of course, I’d have to. I didn’t know when he was supposed to arrive back from New York.

  Wednesday had been one of those unseasonably cool days, but bright, almost like the beginning of fall, and we’d kept the curtains open and shades wrenched up to burn the place full of light without heat. I’d been home from work a while, had eaten dinner and watched a little television, and the sun was finally sinking. I considered drawing the curtains again, but didn’t make a move to.

  Whoever the man in the window had been, he hadn’t returned. I restored the ladder in our shed and tried to forget everything new—my brief hope and the thought of Vince dead in Kansas. I just didn’t have the energy.

  A little past eight, Momma left to pick up Beau Ray from the bus from Elkins. Joshua and I were sitting on the long couch, watching television. I asked him if he’d rather read a script, but he said he was bored with scripts. I asked him if he’d prefer a book, but he said he was bored with books, too.

  “But I was thinking, Leanne,” he said.

  “Yeah? What? Cards?”

  “I was thinking that I’d like to try kissing you,” Joshua Reed said.

  Had I heard him right? But I knew I’d heard him right. And part of me started smiling all over, even as I tried my best to hold it in.

  “What?” I asked.

  So he said it again, only slower, like a grammar lesson on the parts of speech. “I’d. Like. To kiss. You.”

  I looked at him as hard as I could. I tried to see him as though I hadn’t seen him a thousand times before. “I can’t tell if you’re acting,” I said.

  “Oh, come on. I’m not that good an actor,” he said. He looked at me. Oh, how he had gorgeous eyes.

  “Yeah, you are,” I told him.

  He smiled. “Now I want to kiss you even more,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked. I wanted to hear him explain it.

  “I don’t know why,” he said. “I’m an experiential guy. I just want to. I like you. You’ve got such sweet brown eyes.”

  “You’re bored,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he agreed.

  “And a little lonely,” I said.

  He nodded. “Could be.”

  “And first your supermodel girlfriend went and dumped you,” I pointed out. “And then I ruined your chances with Christy and Marsha—”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Exactly.” I waited for him to remember.

  “Oh. Them. Yeah, you did,” he said.

  “And now Charlene’s off and left you in the dust,” I said.

  “Leanne, are you trying to flatter me?”

  “I’m only saying that when you met me, you thought I was a hick. You called me a fucking hick.” I froze. I hadn’t planned to say it, but my voice had rushed ahead of my mind. “I heard you,” I said, more quietly.

  Joshua nodded. He looked down at the couch and his hands.

  “And ditzy,” I added.

  “No,” he said, cutting me off. “I only expected you to be ditzy. I told you I thought you were smart. And I’m sorry about the rest. Really. I was an ass.”

  I wasn’t ready to let go yet. “But you’re stuck in my house, and you want something to do and Sandy won’t touch you so why not Leanne, right? Plus, you’d be getting back at Judy for sending Charlene away.” I felt myself getting pissed at him, for all those reasons, and even for his pretty green eyes.

  “You’re the one who’d be getting back at Judy,” he said, and I was a little embarrassed. He was right on that score. Part of me did want to kiss Joshua for that reason alone. “But I can see your point. A lot of that is probably right. I like the way Sandy l
ooks, sure. But I like who you are. And how you look. It’s different. I know you. But I don’t see us traipsing off together—you know, in part because I can’t leave your house, but also—for all sorts of reasons. I’m not a good traipser, I guess. I don’t want to fuck with you, Leanne. You’ve been good to me. I don’t want to ruin that.”

  “Then don’t,” I said.

  He nodded. I nodded, too.

  “I guess that settles it,” I said. I got up off the couch and stretched my legs. Part of me knew that this had been my chance. There was a high road, and I had taken it and as much as I knew it was right, I also knew that I was sorely tempted. Besides, it was just one kiss, and Max still hadn’t called. And right doesn’t always feel right, in the middle of any single moment. Even an internal compass needs calibration now and again.

  “But—” Joshua said. He looked up at me.

  “But what?” I asked him.

  He took hold of my hand. “I still want to. Sorry.” He smiled. “Oh, come on. Don’t you want to, at least a little bit? Just once? Just for kicks?”

  “Maybe. Part of me might,” I admitted. “Only I don’t think I want to be any closer to your life. I don’t think I really like your life.”

  “I don’t like a lot of it either,” he said. “And I don’t mean the part about being stuck in Pinecob. Maybe if I’d grown up around here, I’d be more like you. I’d be content.”

  “Content or resigned?” I asked. “Or complacent?”

  “Don’t say that. You don’t mean that, do you?” He actually sounded worried.

  “Of course not,” I said, but it rang false to me. I wasn’t the actor that he was. I wasn’t content with what I had. Not anymore at least.

  He nodded. I thought I heard a car door and turned toward the window. But it was light inside and dark out and I couldn’t see a thing. It could have been Momma. It could have been a neighbor or a television van. It could have been some mad fan or Vince or a stranger or no one at all.

  “You hear that?” I asked. “I think someone’s outside.”