Crooked

by Laura McNeal

  “I have to get home,” Clara said, just as Bruce Crookshank caught up with them. He kept a certain respectful distance from Eddie, but when he made eye contact with Clara, he said, “I kind of need to talk to you.”

  Clara glanced toward Eddie. A tight scowl had come into his face, and when he spoke, it was with the hard edge he’d used long ago on the school bus. “Looks like you’re already dating one of the mental patients,” he said. “So let’s just forget I asked.” He turned around and walked off toward the waiting room.

  “Asked what?” Bruce said to Clara.

  “Nothing,” she said, and they walked down the hospital steps toward the bus stop. It was a windy, bitter day, and the gray plastic sides of the bus stop, marked with spray paint and penknives, bubbled out like full sails.

  “You’re taking the bus?” Bruce said.

  Clara turned toward him. “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes.” She gave him the chilliest look she could make. She wasn’t going to say anything more, but couldn’t help herself. “My father doesn’t like me riding the city bus. But I rode it down here, and now I’m riding it back. You know why? Because I thought my coming here was important.”

  Bruce looked slightly embarrassed. “I’ll ride with you—you mind if I ride with you?”

  “I do, very much,” Clara said without looking at him.

  The bus door squealed open, and the driver sat in the humming bus, waiting for her to climb in. “Bye,” Clara said firmly, but Bruce stepped in behind her.

  Clara dropped her coins into the chute and sat down in the nearest empty seat. Up front, only a few yards away, Bruce was frantically going through his pockets, looking for money, muttering, going through his pockets again. He unzipped an interior pocket of his coat and, drawing his hand out, inadvertently pulled out a plastic bag with it. The bag flipped to the floor of the bus and lay there for just an instant. There were photographs inside it, Clara saw—but of what? somebody? somebody naked?— before Bruce snatched them back up.

  The passengers in the bus were so annoyed with the delay that Clara could feel them pulsing with impatience. The bus driver said, “I have to get on with the route, pal. Pay up or step off.”

  Clara came forward and dropped in enough change for Bruce, then sat back down. He sat directly across the aisle. The bus hummed along, and its warmth worked slowly into Clara. She looked out at the dirty snow piled along the street, the long icy teeth hanging from eaves. She wondered what her mother was doing right now, whether she was warm, whether she was sad, whether she missed being home.

  “Thanks.”

  Clara turned around.

  “Thanks,” Bruce said again. “I owe you one.” He had a sheepish look, but Clara reminded herself how good he was at acting.

  “Those pictures that fell out,” she said sharply. “Who are those pictures of?”

  The question seemed actually to catch Bruce off guard. His face pinkened. “Nobody,” he said.

  “How can you have naked pictures of nobody?”

  The shade of Bruce’s face moved toward red. “Who said they were naked pictures?”

  “I do. Because I saw.”

  A moment passed. “Well, if you saw, then you don’t have to ask who.”

  Something flashed in Clara. “I don’t know why I thought I could talk to you.”

  Bruce opened his mouth to speak.

  “Don’t say anything else,” Clara said. She stood up and moved five rows back and sat next to a window, but a few seconds later, she felt the heavy depression of the seat as he sat down next to her.

  “Here,” he said. His breath was surprisingly sweet. He was offering her a cherry candy from a little round tin. She took one and popped it in her mouth. The top of the tin said Rendezvous, and all at once it put Clara in mind of her mother’s crazy plan to go to France.

  “I know you don’t like me,” Bruce said, “but I have to say three things to you.”

  Clara stared fixedly out the window.

  Bruce pressed on. “The first thing I need to say is that I’m the one who called and said I was the naked Amos. It wasn’t Amos. And I was wearing all my clothes, just so you’ll know. The second thing is that I saw the note you put in the paper that day for Amos and grabbed it before he could. Or maybe that’s the first bad thing, and the other one came second. Third, I only pretended to be Mr. MacKenzie because you wouldn’t listen to me when I said I was Bruce. He had said your name in his sleep, but he didn’t try to get you to his sickbed to make a pass at you. Amos wasn’t in on it.” Clara glanced at Bruce, who shrugged. “That’s not Amos’s style.” He slouched back in his seat. “That’s it,” he said, “that’s all I wanted to say.”

  Clara was surprised at how much she wanted to believe what Bruce was saying, and the moment she realized that in her heart she did believe him, she was struck by the fear that he was duping her again.

  The bus was rolling north on Genesee toward her stop. She reached up and pulled the cord so the driver would pull over, and then she peered through the grainy veil of salt and snow that had dried on the windows. Her house was visible, but it was dark; the porch light was the only one on, which meant her father hadn’t come home yet. Or her mother.

  The bus eased to a stop. The driver pulled a lever, and the back door jerked open with an enormous hydraulic breath, illuminating the curb, the sidewalk, and some shards of black snow. “I’m getting off here,” she said to Bruce.

  “But what are you going to do?” Bruce asked, following her off. “Will you give Amos a call?”

  Clara wheeled around and looked at him. She wasn’t mad anymore. She was just tired. The bus pulled away, billowing diesel fumes. Clara waited for the noise to pass, then said, “You and your friend Amos made a fool of me once, but that’s all you get. Find somebody else to make fun of.”

  When she walked away from him this time, Bruce didn’t follow and he didn’t call after her. The red taillights of the bus receded, and all Clara could hear was her own footsteps as she crunched through the ice to her house.

  Nobody was home except Ham, but there were two messages on the answering machine, both from her mother. “Hi, sweetie, it’s me. I’m at Aunt Marie’s and I need to talk to you.” The next one said, “Hi, sweetie, me again. I guess you’re not home yet and Marie and I are going to be out tonight. I just wanted to let you know how much I miss you. I’ll be here awhile longer, but I miss you so much. Bye.”

  Out loud, to the machine, Clara said, “If you miss me so much, why don’t you come back, then?”

  There were no messages from Gerri. Clara dialed her number, but when the answering machine came on—“Yo, it’s me, Gerri”—Clara hung up.

  She went to her father’s study and pulled out his enormous medical dictionary. There was no such thing as Wilkinson disease.

  A half hour later, in her room with a bowl of soup, Clara was surprised to look out and see Bruce still at the bus stop down the street. He was standing in the cold wearing nothing but his light coat and baggy cotton pants. As the cars passed, the headlights threw a gleam on his face and his crossed arms. Clara began to wonder where he lived and who was waiting for him at home. Maybe his father was the kind who was always working late, or his mother didn’t live with him at all. Maybe he had a dog and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he had a normal life or maybe not.

  She set her soup bowl on the floor for Ham to finish, something she could never have done while her mother was home. When he was done, he laid his big head on her knee. They sat like that for a while, in the dark room of the empty house, perfectly still, Clara at her window watching Bruce Crookshank stomp his feet and cross his arms against the cold until finally he gave up on the bus and started walking, his breath rising above his head in a cold, miserable fog.

  12

  AN APOLOGY

  Amos touched his shaved head and winced. It was Wednesday, and he was home. He could smell pancakes and bacon and wondered if his mother would bring them to his bedside, or if he would be allowe
d to walk to the table. It was possible to imagine the rustling of his father’s newspaper, or maybe he could actually hear it. Maybe the whack in the head had affected his hearing as well as his sight, which seemed painfully acute just now, making sunlight hard to bear. Maybe he was turning into a superhero and would be able to see through walls, hear baseball games without a radio, and telepathically tell Clara that Bruce was a subhuman for setting her and Amos up the way he had.

  “Hey, slugger,” his father said, easing into the room with a yellow-flowered tray, “don’t know how you rate it, but what we’ve got here is room service.”

  “What time is it?” Amos asked. It seemed strange to have his father home at breakfast time. Usually he was on his route until much later in the morning.

  “It’s ten-thirty, you slugabed.” Then, more seriously, “How’re you feeling?”

  “Okay. Fine, I think.”

  His father’s face visibly relaxed. “So nothing feels different?”

  Amos thought about it. “I kind of feel a little stupid about everything.”

  “Really? About what, for example?”

  “I don’t know. About everything, I guess.” He took a gulp of orange juice. “So, can I go back to school tomorrow? I have a test in physical science.”

  “Possibly. Possibly not. Depends on the patient’s progress.”

  “So how do you feel, Dad?”

  “Me? Not bad. Good enough, and bound to improve.” He seemed about to say more on the subject, but didn’t. Instead he talked about Amos’s pigeons, how Liz had been feeding them faithfully and changing their water while Amos was gone. “I suspect she thinks you owe her big for this, slugger,” he said, smiling.

  Amos’s mother stepped into the room. She looked like she’d been crying, but Amos couldn’t be sure. Maybe she’d slept badly worrying about him. “Hey, Mom,” Amos said, “thanks for the pancakes.”

  “They’re blueberry,” she said. “But don’t think we’re going to spoil you forever. By Monday, dumpling, you’ll be back to oatmeal.”

  “I’m not a dumpling,” Amos said, and his father, trying to keep the mood light, said to his mother, “He’s not a dumpling, dumpling.”

  When Amos had eaten four and a half pancakes and five slices of bacon and gulped down all the milk and orange juice, he realized suddenly that he had eaten way too much and might be sick any minute. He lay back on the bed and tried to think of his stomach expanding comfortably to accommodate this great mass of food. He’d read that you could visualize things in your body and think positive, healing thoughts about the sick parts. These thoughts supposedly acted on the body parts and made them do what you hoped they’d do. He had read this in a book he’d found next to his father’s chair. Since then, he’d imagined his father devoting each night to a train of healing thoughts while he pretended to watch TV. Only what parts, exactly, were sick in his father’s body? Where did the Tums figure in? If Amos directed his own thoughts in the same direction, would that help?

  Amos still felt woozy. He closed his eyes and laid a towel over his face to shut out the light that seemed to blast through the curtains. He was trying to imagine his stomach as a placid, shallow basin in which the water level had only temporarily risen when he heard heavy footsteps in the hall and then, close by, Bruce Crookshank saying, “Amos, my man, you’re finally out of stir!”

  Hearing Bruce’s voice made Amos realize that he wasn’t even close to forgiving Crook for making him look like a fool with Clara Wilson. Without lifting the towel, Amos said, “I’m sick, Crook, and you sure aren’t the cure. Why don’t you do the honorable thing and leave?”

  Through the towel, Amos heard what sounded like receding footsteps, then silence. He waited a minute, then a minute more. He lifted the towel and peered out. To his surprise, Bruce was actually gone.

  Amos pulled the towel back over his head and toyed with the idea of calling Clara after school. Or maybe he should write to her, since she would probably hang up the second she heard his voice. He lifted his head, decided the pancakes were going to stay put, and found a spiral notebook in his bag beside the bed.

  Dear Clara, he wrote, then crossed out the Dear because it sounded too sappy.

  I just wanted you to know that I didn’t call you up and say I was naked. That was somebody else and I didn’t know about it. Also, I thought your card in the newspaper was nice. Bruce saw it because he was at my house that night. I’m sorry about what happened at the hospital, but I was asleep and pretty confused.

  Amos stopped there and put his hand over his eyes. That last part was a problem. He couldn’t exactly say he’d been dreaming about girls’ breasts and so in his sleep had just naturally reached out to touch hers. Even mentioning the word breasts would just give her more reason to think he was some kind of a pervert, and maybe he was. Maybe he was no different from Crook and Jay Foley. Maybe the only difference was that they were more honest about it.

  I don’t know how to explain it except that it was a mistake and I was actually asleep, not just faking it. Anyhow, I promise to leave you alone. I just wanted to explain my side.

  Amos reread the letter, which suddenly seemed as stupid and puny as his own stupid, puny life. Then, just to get it over with, he signed his name, folded the letter into an envelope, and sealed it.

  13

  ENDANGERED SPECIES

  Gerri hadn’t called since returning three days earlier from Stowe, and it seemed clear she was avoiding Clara at school, taking different routes to classes and going off campus for lunch. Clara’s mother called Clara twice more, both times in the morning before school. Each time, after saying she was fine, Clara stood at the kitchen phone and said, “You want to talk to Dad?” but her mother said, “No, sweetie, I just want to talk to you and find out how you’re doing and tell you how much I miss you.”

  The third time her mother had said that, Clara said, “Then why don’t you just come home? Then you can stop missing me because you’ll be here.”

  A second passed before her mother spoke. “The why of it is very complicated, sweetie, and it runs pretty deep.” She spoke in her most adult voice, which to Clara was her most annoying voice of all, because it always seemed to say, “I’m an adult and you’re not, which is why I understand these things and you don’t.”

  “I’d better go or I’ll be late for school,” Clara said, and her mother, in her normal voice, in her sweet sad normal voice, said, “Okay. Au revoir, sweetie.”

  Clara hated it when her mother used French words, but this time it reminded her of a fight between her parents that had ended in reconciliation. It was last summer, and her father had been reading in his chair while her mother watched a French lesson on one of the educational channels. Verbs conjugated themselves on a blue background, followed by scenes in which Parisian students ordered limon pressé at sidewalk cafés.

  “Oh, Thurm,” her mother said, “just look at that street. Don’t you wish sometimes we’d gone to live abroad the way we planned?”

  Her father glanced briefly at the screen and said nothing. A few minutes later, he said, “I’m going out,” and out he went, the screen door banging shut behind him. Clara watched her father walk down the drive, stand at the end of it, and stare at the traffic with his hands in his pockets. If he put his hands on his hips, Clara thought, he would look more decisive.

  “Dad’s standing on the driveway,” Clara said.

  Her mother turned around and parted the curtains. He was still standing there with his hands in his pockets.

  “He looks sad,” Clara said. “Maybe you should go out there.”

  For some reason, this worked. Her mother switched off the TV, stepped into her shoes, and joined him. After a few minutes, her mother took her father’s hand and they went for a walk.

  This was what Clara thought about while she walked to Mrs. Harper’s house on Tuesday afternoon. She had to think of a way to do that again. Her mother might be living in Dalton, and her father might be willing to wait with his
hands in his pockets, but maybe if Clara said the right thing, a meeting would occur and her mother would come home.

  Clara changed the cat litter and dusted under Mrs. Harper’s figurines. Then she gently wiped cobwebs off the lampshades. She had the feeling Mrs. Harper was testing her for regular work. If she didn’t break any knickknacks, if she cleaned things she wasn’t specifically asked to clean, if she left Ham at home, where he couldn’t threaten the cats, she would be given more work, and her camp fund—now up to $140—would rise accordingly. Except that maybe instead of horse camp, she could use the money to take her parents on vacation.

  But Mrs. Harper’s house was the wrong place to feel hopeful about her mother. It was lonely there, and the heat was on too high. The air smelled musty, like a house preserved by the historical society. It was as if Mrs. Harper had ceased to exist once her husband died but someone had to keep house in his memory.

  Clara’s house felt a little that way with her mother gone. She still found herself obeying her mother’s rules: Don’t cut paper with the sewing scissors. Don’t leave the dishrag wadded up in the sink. Don’t cut meat on the bread board. When Clara came home from Mrs. Harper’s, she started to cut newspaper with the sewing scissors and stopped short. Maybe this was a test—like the princess and the pea. Maybe if she kept things the same and remembered all the rules, her mother would come back for her things, see how careful Clara had been, and decide to stay home. Clara went to the kitchen for the old paper-cutting scissors.

  The newspaper article she was cutting out was about the juvenile offender who’d vandalized private property and assaulted Amos. So at least that much of what Bruce Crookshank had said was true, she thought. The offender’s name wasn’t given because he was a minor, but Clara, like everyone else at school, knew it was Charles Tripp. This made her wonder about Eddie Tripp, too. Had he been at the hospital to try to find out about Amos—and to find out what he was telling people? According to the news story, the damage to postboxes and lights was estimated at $1,566. It said that Amos MacKenzie, who had interceded to stop the vandalism, had been hospitalized but was recovering quickly.