by Jodi Picoult
“How come you didn’t tell me you were coming inside? I was worried about you.”
All the ladies are watching us. When we turn towards them, they pretend to be doing other things.
“I did tell you,” my mother says. “You were underwater, though.” She unwraps the towel from her body; she is wearing her bathing suit. “I just wanted to cool off.”
I’m not going to fight her. I walk through the twisted lines of lockers. My mother stops in front of Peg, who is hoisting up her underwear. “Give Tommy time,” she says. “He’ll come around.”
Outside my mother sits on the edge of the shallow end, dangling her feet. When she really gets hot she sits on the first step of the pool and lets her butt get wet. When I see her there I swim up underwater and grab her ankles. She screams. “You shouldn’t sit here,” I tell her. “All the little kids pee in the shallow end.”
“Think about it, Rebecca. Won’t it make its way to the deep end, then?”
I try to remind her that this is a concrete pool; that she will be able to grab the edge of it the entire way around if she chooses to get wet above her waist. “It’s less deep than the Salt Lake, and you were doing the backfloat there.”
“I did that against my will. You tricked me.”
She exasperates me. I breaststroke away from her, diving over the blue and white bubble-string that separates the shallow from the deep end. I slide my belly down the concrete ramp and touch the drain of the pool. I run out of air and push off the bottom, roll onto my back. The clouds are stuck in the sky. I can make out all kinds of shapes: beagles and circus acts, lobsters, umbrellas. With my ears tucked under the surface of the water, I listen to my pulse.
I backfloat until I crash into a woman wearing a bathing cap with plastic flowers. Then I tread water. My mother isn’t on the steps anymore, and she isn’t sitting on the edge of the pool. I glance around wildly, wondering where the hell she’s gone this time. And then I see her, chest-high in the water. With one hand she’s grabbing onto the ledge of the pool, and with the other hand she’s grabbing the blue and white string of buoys. When she gets to the other side she lifts the heavy line and ducks under it. I’ll bet she doesn’t hear the kids squealing, or the slap of thongs on puddles. I’ll bet she isn’t thinking of the heat. She grabs onto the edge of the pool again and slides one foot down the ramp of the deep end, testing her limits.
34 SAM
“So these two guys open a bar together,” Hadley says, and then he stops to take a drink of his beer. “They go through this whole big deal cleaning up the place and stocking it and then comes the big opening day. They’re waiting together for a customer, and in walks this grasshopper that’s six feet tall.”
“Here we go,” says Joley.
Hadley laughs and sprays beer all over my shirt.
“Jesus, Hadley,” I say, but I’m laughing too.
“Okay, okay. So there’s this grasshopper—”
“Six feet tall—” Joley and I yell out at the same time.
Hadley grins. “And it sits down at the bar and orders a vodka tonic. So the guy who’s waiting on him goes up to his buddy and says, ‘I don’t believe this. Our first customer is a grasshopper.’ And they have a few laughs and then he goes back to the grasshopper with his vodka tonic. And he says, ‘I can’t believe it. You’re our first customer and you’re a grasshopper.’ And the grasshopper says, ’Yeah, well.’ So the bartender goes, ‘You know, there’s a drink named after you.’”
Joley turned to me. “This is going to be a disappointment. I can feel it.”
“Shut up, shut up!” Hadley says. “So the bartender goes, ‘You know-’”
“There’s a drink named after you,” I say, prompting him.
“And the grasshopper says, ‘That’s ridiculous. I’ve never heard of a drink called an Irving’” Hadley finishes the joke and then hoots so loud the whole place is looking at our table.
“That’s the dumbest joke I’ve ever heard,” Joley says.
“I have to agree,” I tell Hadley. “That was pretty stupid.”
“Stupid,” Hadley says, “but real fucking funny”
Of course anything’s funny when you’ve had about ten beers apiece and it’s after midnight. We are onto our stupid joke contest: the one to come up with the stupidest joke gets out of paying the tab. We’ve been here for a while. When we first got here, around nine-ish, there was next to no one in the bar, and now it’s packed. We’ve been keeping tabs on the women that come in-no real lookers, yet, but it’s been getting darker, and everyone’s getting prettier. It will probably keep up like this for another hour: we’ll tell dumb jokes and talk about the women behind their backs and none of us will do a damn thing about it, so we’ll leave just the three of us and wake up alone with hangovers.
We come here every few weeks-everyone’s welcome who works in the fields, to talk about their gripes at a place where it’s common knowledge the boss is buying. Some of the guys make up complaints just for the free beer. The meeting starts unofficially at nine, and usually by eleven-thirty most of the others have cleared out. From nine to ten we actually do discuss the business of the orchard: on my end, I tell everyone about the revenues and the new costs, or about meetings I’ve had with produce buyers, and the guys from the field talk about getting a new tractor, or division of labor. They’re the only guys I know of in an orchard who haven’t unionized, and I think it’s because of these conversations. I don’t know that much ever gets done—money’s tight—but I think they just like knowing that I am willing to listen.
It always ends up with me, Hadley and Joley-most likely because we all live in the Big House, we all drive down here together, and we all have nothing better to do. We participate in the obligatory dumb joke event. We put quarters in the jukebox and talk about whether or not Meatloaf songs really belong with the oldies—Joley says yes, but he’s five years older anyway. Hadley finds some girl and talks to us for about three hours about how he’d like to dance with her and do other unmentionable things, but he chickens out halfway to her table and we get to rib him about it. If Joley has enough to drink, he’ll do his Honeymooners imitations and his best turkey call. Is it any wonder that I’m always the one who drives us home?
“So tell us about your sister,” I say to Joley, who returns from the bar with three more Rolling Rocks.
“Yeah,” says Hadley. “Is she a babe?”
“For Christ’s sake. She’s his sister”
Hadley lifts his eyebrows—this is a real effort for him by now. “So what, Sam? She’s not my sister.”
Joley laughs. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on what you call a babe.”
Hadley points to a girl in a red leather dress, leaning on the bar and sucking on an olive. “That’s what I call a babe,” he says. He purses up his lips and makes kiss noises.
“Will somebody get that boy laid?” Joley says. “He’s a walking gland.”
We watch Hadley stand (almost) and make his way towards the red-leather girl. He uses the backs of chairs and other people to steer by. He makes it all the way to the bar stool next to her, and then turns to look at us. He mouths, Watch this. Then he taps the girl on her shoulder and she looks at him, grimaces, and flips the olive into his face.
Hadley reels back to our table. “She loves me.”
“So your sister will be getting here soon?” I ask. I haven’t any idea, really. Joley brought it up once, and that was it.
“I figure five more days, maybe.”
“You looking forward to seeing her?”
Joley sticks his thumb into the neck of an empty green bottle. “Like you don’t know, Sam. It’s been so damn long, with her out in California.”
“You guys pretty tight?”
“She’s my best friend.” Joley looks up at me and his eyes are bare, the way they get that makes people so uncomfortable around him.
Hadley sits with his cheek pressed into the table. “But is she a babe? That’s the question.”
Joley pulls Hadley’s head up by a chunk of hair. “You know who’s a babe? I’ll tell you who’s a babe. My niece. Rebecca. She’s fifteen, and she’s gonna be a knockout.” He lets Hadley’s face fall back down, slapping against the formica.
“Jailbait,” Hadley murmurs.
I look at Hadley. “You gonna get sick, Hadley? Do you need to get to the john?”
Hadley tries to shake his head without lifting it off the table. “What I really need, is another beer.” He waves his hand in the air. “Gar-konn!”
“That’s garçon, you idiot. He’s pathetic,” I say to Joley, like I do every week.
“So tell me about this Jane.” Someone’s got to hold up a conversation.
“Number one, she’s on the run. I figure her husband will show up at the orchard some time after she gets there.”
“That’s nice,” I say, sarcastic. “Nothing like a scandal in Stow.”
“It’s not anything like that. The guy’s an asshole.”
“What are we talking about?” Hadley says.
I pat him on the shoulder. “Go back to sleep,” I say. “But isn’t he a famous asshole?”
“I guess.” Joley rolls his empty beer bottle on its side. “That doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.”
“If he’s such an asshole why is he coming after her?”
“Because she’s a babe,” Hadley says, “remember?”
“Because he doesn’t know how to let go. He doesn’t understand that she’d be better off without him because he doesn’t know how to think about anything but himself.”
Joley looks at Hadley, who says, “This is too fucking deep,” and leaves to go to the bathroom.
“Sounds like a soap opera to me,” I say. “Couldn’t she just have stopped off in Mexico for a divorce?”
“She can’t do anything until she comes here and talks to me. This hasn’t only got to do with Oliver. This has to do with us, when we were kids, and the whole way she grew up. She needs me,” Joley says, and for his sake I hope she does.
I am trying so hard not to pass judgment on Joley’s sister. I mean, I don’t even know her, right? And for all practical purposes I should feel about her the same way I feel about Joley. Joley’s proven himself. He loves to watch things grow, same as me. But every time I picture his sister, I see her like every other girl who looked down her nose at where I came from; what I wanted to be.
A little while after Joley started to work at the orchard we realized I had dated a girl, Emily, who lived two houses down the street from him as a kid. She had long black hair that hung to her waist and eyes like emeralds, and to top it all off, she had tits like a Playboy bunny’s. I was watching her at a hardware store, and she asked if I could help her with the difference between a nut and a bolt. I now suspect this was all a ploy. Of course I took her home and on that street where Joley was growing up, she gave me my first hand job.
Emily invited me to a party at some friend’s house. I remember I came wearing the clothes I wore for church, and she was dressed in this skin-tight purple skirt. I spent the first two hours of this party gawking at the cathedral ceilings and stained-glass windows of this mansion. Then Emily grabbed me and asked me to dance. She pushed us into the middle of this parquet floor, next to another couple. She wheeled me around so I was looking into the face of a tall guy in a tennis sweater, and then she burst into tears. “You see what you’ve done to me!” I thought she was talking to me, and I looked down to see if I was stepping on her feet. But she was talking to this guy, who it turned out had dumped her a couple of weeks before. “Because of you,” she cried, “look at what I have to go out with!”
What, not who. I stopped dancing with her there and then, and with all those rich kids looking at me like I had three heads, I ran out the heavy beautiful door of that house and drove back to Stow. Joley mentioned that Emily’s older sister and Jane were friends. That they all moved in the same circles. It is quite possible Jane was even at that party.
This is what comes to mind when Joley brings up his sister: that maybe she saw me, and will walk up to me the minute she sets foot on my orchard, and laugh her head off. “Aren’t you—?” she’ll say, and on my own land, she’ll make me feel as worthless as I did when I was just a kid.
“Earth to Sam,” Hadley says, coming back from the bathroom. He’s got the red-leather girl in tow. “Look who wants to buy us all beers.” He winks at the girl. “I’m just kidding. I told her you wanted to buy her a beer.”
“Me.” I smile at the girl. “Urn. I—I—”
“He’s engaged,” Joley says. “This is his bachelor’s party.”
“Oh,” says the girl. “A kind of Last Supper?” She leans across the table.
“I’m not getting married, though,” says Hadley.
“Look, the truth is, I’m not getting married. The truth is, he’s going to blow a fuse unless you dance with him. He’s likely to become violent. Please do us this one small favor.” Hadley, on cue, drops to his knees and assumes a begging position.
The girl laughs and grabs Hadley’s hand. “Come on, Fido.” She looks at me as she’s leaving. “You owe me one, and don’t think I’m not going to collect.”
Joley and I watch Hadley dancing with the red-leather girl. The music is Chubby Checker’s “Twist,” but Hadley is slow dancing. His face is buried in the girl’s neck. It is difficult to see if he is standing, or if she is holding him up.
After the dance, the girl slips away in the direction of the bathrooms and Hadley comes back over to us. “She’s in love with me,” he says. “She told me.”
“We gotta get him out of here before he fathers a child,” I tell Joley.
“Hey,” Joley says, “I never got to tell my stupid joke.”
Hadley and I look at each other. There’s always time for another stupid bar joke.
“Okay.” Joley rubs his hands together. “There are these three strings, standing outside a bar.”
“Strings?”
“Yeah, strings. And they want a drink. So the first string goes into the bar and hops onto the bar stool and says to the bartender, ‘Good evening, sir. I’d like a drink.’ The bartender says, ‘I can’t serve you. You’re a string!’ and he kicks him out of the bar.”
“A string,” Hadley says. “I love it.”
“The second string goes into the bar, and decides to try another approach. He sits down on the stool and slams his fist on the table and says to the bartender, ‘Gimme a drink, Goddammit!’ And the bartender looks at him and laughs and says, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t serve you. You’re a string.’ And he boots this guy out of the bar too.”
The red-leather girl comes back and sits on Hadley’s lap.
“So by now the third string sees what’s going on. He looks at his two friends and says, ‘I’ve got it’ Then he reaches up by his head and unravels himself a little and then he twists himself up. He walks into the bar and sits upon the bar stool. ‘Hi,’ he says to the bartender, ‘I’d like a drink.’ And the bartender sighs and says, look, I’ve told you once, I’ve told you twice. I can’t serve you. You’re a string.’ And the string takes offense. He squares his shoulders. He looks the bartender in the eye. And he says, ‘I’m a frayed knot!’” Joley starts to crack up. “You get it? I’m afraid not?”
I start to laugh. Hadley either doesn’t understand it or he doesn’t find it funny.
The red-leather girl purses her lips, trying not to laugh. “That’s the stupidest joke I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh! You hear that!” Joley reaches for the girl and kisses her on the mouth.
She laughs. “It was really stupid,” she says, “really.”
“Mine was more stupid,” Hadley insists, banging the table.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “This one was really dumb.”
In the background, the bartender announces last call. Hadley and Joley look at me, their eyes glinting with competition. About those dumb joke contests: I’m the judge. The
categories are the content, the punch line, the delivery. Oh, and the confidence the joke teller has in his story. I hem and haw for effect, but this time I have to agree with the girl. Hands down, Joley is the winner.
35 JOLEY
Dear Jane—
Do you remember when the Cosgroves’ house burned down? You were in high school, and I was still a little kid. Mama came into my room in the middle of the night, and you were with her—she’d just woken you up. She said, “Mr. Cosgrove’s place is on fire,” really calm. The Cosgroves were the neighbors behind us, through the backyard and the woods. Daddy was already dressed and downstairs. We had to get dressed too, even though it was three in the morning. As we came into the kitchen the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Silverstein, across the street. She saw the orange flames, like a halo, behind our house, and she thought our place was on fire. “No,” I remember Daddy saying, “it’s not us.”
When nobody was looking, you and I stole into the backyard, where the small forest behind was exploding. We walked through the woods, through the cool, tall birches, across the wet pine carpet. We got as close to the house as we thought we could. The Cosgroves’ den faced the woods, and when we got near we could hear the fire breathing like a lion. It sucked all the air away and sent sparks into the night, millions of new stars. You said, “How beautiful!” and then, realizing the tragedy, covered your mouth.
We tried to walk around the house, towards the street, to where the firemen were working to put out the fire. We saw windows explode in front of us. Some kids we knew from the neighborhood were standing on the flat, inactive fire hoses. When the firemen opened the hydrants, the water would pulse through them like arteries, popping the kids off one by one. We decided there wasn’t that much to see, especially because the Cosgroves were huddled in a pocket on that side of the house, crying in their bathrobes.
Daddy was back at our house rigging up hoses and buckets, convinced that the fire was going to spread to the entire neighborhood, what with the houses so close together. He was spraying our roof. He figured, if you keep it wet, it won’t ignite.
