by P. E. Ryan
“That’s the traffic on San Marco. I’m at a pay phone.”
“Out prowling around?”
“I was working late at the Danforth place, but I’m heading home now.”
“Oh.”
Charlie couldn’t tell whether or not she believed him. He said, “So, listen, the reason I called…I was thinking you and I should go out on a fancy date. Like, a nice dinner somewhere.”
There was a pause. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. To celebrate the start of our senior year. Someplace nice, where we have to dress up. Maybe the Vargo Steak House.”
“That place costs a fortune!”
“So what?”
“Well…okay,” Kate said. “I’d love to go. When?”
“How about tomorrow night?”
“You’re on,” she said, and then added, “You aren’t planning on luring me into one of those seedy motels afterward, are you?”
He heard the playfulness in her tone. She was coming back around. “It’s been on my mind,” he said. “I’m just trying to find the seediest one. Want to help me look?”
“You’re crazy,” she laughed. “We’ll start with the steaks, and see where it goes. What time?”
“Seven,” he said, “sharp.” She sounded like the old Kate again, even called him Charlie Horse before hanging up. He walked back to his car feeling like he’d accomplished something. What was Coach Bobbit’s phrase, when they’d played a crappy game but still had a quarter to go? Damage control.
That night, it was the same story from his father—the same lies about how he’d driven all over town that day. Charlie found himself more irritated than worried. On impulse the next morning, after he’d made breakfast for them both, he palmed an extra egg and placed it behind one of the back tires of his father’s Buick.
At the Danforth house, he smashed cracked windowpanes with a hammer, carefully broke the old glazing compound away from the frames, and painted the wood with primer. With the window frames he’d already primed, he replaced the glass and anchored new panes with tiny metal points that stuck to his fingers and vanished from sight if they were dropped. Then he laid in fresh glazing compound and smoothed it down with a putty knife dipped in linseed oil. It was meticulous work, and it was usually very good for clearing his head and getting lost from the world for a while. Today, though, he kept thinking about Kate, about the evening they were going to have together and where it might lead, and whether or not he could talk her into coming here, to the Danforth house. He also thought repeatedly about the Buick sitting in the carport. The egg behind the tire.
He didn’t want to bother cooking dinner that evening because he wanted plenty of time to get ready, so he stopped on the way home and picked up a pizza.
When he got to the house and pulled into the driveway, he saw the egg, unbroken, behind the Buick’s left rear tire. Maybe he won’t lie, Charlie thought. Maybe he’ll say he hasn’t done a damn thing all day.
His father was in the bathroom off the living room. Charlie heard the toilet flush, and a moment later the bathroom door swung open and a figure lurched forward toward the recliner. His father reached for the back of the chair. If his hand hadn’t caught it, he would have fallen.
“Dad!” Charlie said, dropping the pizza box onto the kitchen counter. He started into the living room. “Are you all right? You nearly fell.”
“No, I didn’t,” his father said, sounding grumpy. His terry-cloth robe flapped open. The sash was caught under one slippered foot. He wore his pajamas underneath. “I didn’t trip, I just—this carpet bunches up, right here. I’ve been meaning to fix it.”
Charlie took his father’s elbow. “Been hitting the vodka already, Dad?”
His father jerked his arm away. “Oh, knock it off, Charlie! Stop parenting me! You barely walk in the door, and you start giving me a hard time. Do I give you a hard time?” The edges had been sanded off his words.
“I got us a pizza,” Charlie said, stepping back.
“What kind?”
“Huh?” Charlie asked, watching him. The man was practically teetering, holding on to the chair.
“What kind? Pepperoni? Sausage? I’m not speaking French, am I?”
“Pepperoni.”
“Let’s eat,” his father said.
Charlie walked toward the kitchen as his father followed. A nearly empty bottle of red wine sat open on the counter next to the refrigerator. He got out plates and poured two glasses of water. They sat down at the table.
When his father bit into a slice, half of it fell down his chin. He all but growled as he swiped at his mouth with his free hand.
Charlie looked down at his plate. “So, did you go anywhere today, Dad?”
“Yes,” his father said quickly. “I drove to the office. Made some calls.” He chewed as he spoke.
Charlie was surprised at how angry he felt. “You’re lying!” he yelled. “I know you’re lying!”
It was as if he hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t said anything at all. His father chewed, swallowed, stared straight ahead. Then he picked up his water glass. It slipped out of his hand and shattered on the floor.
“Whoops,” his father said. He reached for the chunks of glass.
“Don’t!” Charlie shouted. “What are you doing?”
His father was bending over and trying to gather the broken glass with his fingers. The hand he was using to collect the shards left a wide red smear across the floor.
“You’ve cut yourself!”
“I have not,” his father said. “That’s a scratch.”
“Dad—” Charlie was bent over, trying to reach for the glass and his father’s hands at the same time. “Don’t! Just don’t touch anything!” The cut hand was dripping blood. “Let me get a paper towel. Don’t move.” He jumped up from his chair and turned his back on the craziness. When he turned around again, a wad of paper towels clutched in front of him, his father was up from the table and walking across the living room, holding his hand against his robe. “Wait!” Charlie hollered. He ran after him.
His father walked down the hall to his bedroom. “Good night, Charlie,” he said, and then sat down on the bed, still clutching his bleeding hand.
Charlie ran into the bathroom and got the Band-Aids from under the sink. “Don’t move, Dad. Just let me get this cleaned up, will you?” He knelt down in front his father and pressed the wad of paper towels to the cut and squeezed.
“Ow,” his father said, as if making a casual observation.
Still squeezing, Charlie looked up into his father’s eyes. “I know you didn’t go anywhere today.”
“Charlie, please, would you just let me…” He glanced at the bed he was sitting on. “Sleep?”
“Tell me you didn’t go anywhere. I know you didn’t move your car.”
“You don’t know that.”
Charlie peeled back the paper towels. They stuck to the bloody thumb, and when they finally gave way, he saw the puncture wound, still bleeding. “I think you’re going to need stitches.”
“I am not!” his father said. He actually started laughing. “I’m the grown-up here. I know if I need stitches or not. And I don’t. Give me those.” He indicated the box of Band-Aids Charlie was holding. Charlie handed them over. His father fumbled with the box one-handedly, and it dropped into his lap.
The egg, Charlie thought. Tell him about the egg. He reached forward and took the box of Band-Aids before his father could pick it up again. There was blood on the box. “Can we please go to the hospital and get your thumb looked at?”
“Charlie—no.”
“Fine!” Charlie snapped. “Don’t blame me if you bleed to death!” But he calmed himself, pressed the paper towels against the thumb again, and used his teeth to tear open a Band-Aid. He stretched one tightly around the thumb, then opened another, and another, until the thumb was encased and the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
“See that?” his father said, looking down at the bandages. “Just a l
ittle cut. You did a good job, Charlie.” He stretched himself out until he was lying flat with his head on the pillow.
Charlie rubbed his face with both hands. He got up and started out of the room, then walked back and sat on the end of the bed. With his back to his father, he said, “Here’s the thing, Dad.” He rubbed his face again, and clenched his hands together. “I’m—I’m worried about you. I wanted to see if you were actually leaving the house, so I—I stuck an egg under your tire. And when I got home the egg wasn’t broken, so that means you didn’t go anywhere. It means…”
He suddenly realized he didn’t want to talk about the egg. He didn’t even want to talk about how his father never left the house anymore. What he really wanted to talk about was his mother.
I wish Mom was here, he imagined himself saying. I just really wish she was here, because she wouldn’t let us get so crazy. I wish we could talk about Mom!
He looked at his father, who was breathing evenly, his head sunk into the pillow, his eyes closed. He’d fallen asleep.
“Damn it!” Charlie said aloud. He glanced down at his father’s thumb to make sure the blood wasn’t coming through the bandages, then walked out of the room.
Sound asleep. Probably not going to move for hours. There was no reason to cower next to the window with the fan going. Charlie dug his rolling papers out of his nightstand. He rolled and lit a joint standing in the middle of his bedroom, took a long draw, and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. He’s out of control, he thought. I don’t even know what to do with him. He took another hit, then put the joint out, took off all his clothes, and walked across the hall to his bathroom.
In the shower, he tried to push every thought out his head and down the drain. He dried off fiercely, as if smothering flames.
Back in his room, he stood wrapped in a towel before the mirror over his dresser. His face looked puffy but his body looked thin. He would look like hell in his basketball uniform right now. Good thing he didn’t have to wear it. He lit the joint again and dug through his closet, laying out a few shirts. A couple pairs of pants. A tie (he couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn one). He glanced at the clock on his nightstand. Plenty of time. Even with all that craziness, he was still ahead of schedule. Perrin, he thought, glancing at himself, you’re going to go the distance tonight. It’s going to happen. Visualize it. He put on a CD, took one more hit off the joint to relax, then stretched out on his bed for a power nap.
When he woke up, it was nearly ten P. M. Foggy, disoriented, he sprang out of bed and scrambled for his pants. Before he had them on, he grasped how awful the situation was. This was bad. Really bad. He had to call Kate.
But he ran down the hall first and looked in at his father, who was still sound asleep. There was no sign of blood seeping through the bandage on his thumb.
Cursing and storming down the hall, Charlie went back to his room and dialed Kate’s number.
Mrs. Bryant answered.
“It’s Charlie. I need to—can I talk to Kate?”
“I don’t think she wants to talk to you right now, Charlie. Do you?” Mrs. Bryant said faintly, away from the phone. “No, Charlie, she says she doesn’t want to talk right now.”
Charlie pressed his hand against his forehead. “Mrs. Bryant, please. I just need to talk to her. I need to explain something.” But what was he going to explain? That his drunk father had cut himself? That Charlie had tended to him and then gotten high and fallen asleep? He had no idea what he would say; he just wanted to talk to Kate.
There was a long stretch of silence on the other end of the line, so silent that he suspected a hand was being pressed against the receiver. Then Mrs. Bryant came back on. “I’m sorry, but Kate doesn’t want to come to the phone right now. She says she’ll call you. It’s late now, Charlie, so I’m going to hang up. Good night.”
8.
(We haven’t capsized yet, have we?)
“LINNN-DAA!” Melissa wailed along with Ernest Borgnine. She crouched next to the television and thrust her arm down over the back of a dining-room chair, opening her hand toward the carpet. Then she made a fist and held it up toward an imaginary Gene Hackman. “You! Preacher! You lyin’, murderin’ son of a bitch!”
The rest of them clapped and hooted.
“Bravo!” Justin shouted from his seat next to Sam on the couch.
Melissa made a goofy bow, then darted back down to her spot on the floor.
They’d drawn character names, according to Melissa’s rules for the film festival. Whenever the group decided a moment in the movie was worthy of a dramatic reenactment, they stopped the DVD, and the person who’d drawn the name had to get up in front of the group and act it out alongside the character. Sam had drawn Belle Rosen, the Shelley Winters character. He’d already had his big moment: getting down on his knees next to the television and clutching his chest, making choking sounds as he faked a heart attack, and then collapsing onto his back. They’d given him a standing ovation.
“More!” Justin had yelled.
“No more,” Sam had said, grinning as he got to his feet. “I’m dead. Now I get to go back to my trailer and…eat bon-bons.”
The evening had been more fun than Sam ever expected, in part because Justin had shown up—and with a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale and a jar of popcorn, to boot. “Organic popcorn?” Melissa had said. “So it wasn’t, like, doused in nuclear dust?”
“No way,” Justin had said. “It’s free-range, too. No cages for those corncobs. They were allowed to walk around and socialize before they were sent to the chopping block.”
“How humane.” She’d turned toward the living room. “Everybody, this is Justin. Justin, that’s Tonya, Ben, Lisa, and Sam.”
Justin had waved at everyone, but his eyes went directly to Sam, who grinned and motioned him over to an open spot beside him.
“Sorry I’m late,” Justin said, his arm grazing Sam’s as he sat down. “We haven’t capsized yet, have we?”
“Not yet,” Sam told him. “But you missed Tonya doing her Red Buttons power walk around the deck.”
Melissa stuck a baseball cap in front of Justin. “Draw a name. Cliff didn’t show up, so there are still two left. You’re either Acres the waiter or Reverend Scott.”
Justin drew the name and unfolded it like a fortune cookie. “Reverend Scott,” he read.
“Good! Acres croaks about ten minutes after the ship turns over.”
Now they were reaching the end of the movie. It was time for Justin/Reverend Scott’s big scene. He scooped a handful of popcorn from the bowl and funneled it into his mouth. “I’m up,” he told Sam, mid-chew. “Wish me luck.”
On the TV screen, Gene Hackman was perched on the scaffolding, about to make his leap for the steam valve. Justin went through a few mock stretches, then stood next to the screen, watching it. When Hackman leaped out and grabbed the valve, hanging from it, Justin pitched himself forward, grabbed the empty cookie plate off the coffee table and held it over his head with his arms fully extended.
They burst out laughing and applauded.
In this position, Justin’s T-shirt was riding up, exposing a quarter moon of tanned stomach. Sam’s eyes kept going down to it.
“You want another life?” Hackman yelled, and Justin yelled it right along with him, staring up at the plate. “Then take me!” He knew the lines perfectly. His voice overlapped Hackman’s in stereo. He turned the plate in his hands just as Hackman was turning the valve. “You can make it!” Justin/Hackman yelled to Melissa/Borgnine. “Keep going! Rogo! Get them through!” Then he dropped straight down onto the carpet, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“Encore!” Sam yelled over the clapping.
Melissa’s mother entered the room with a tray of brownies. She stepped up to the television and rapped her knuckles against the top of it.
“Mom, we’re watching this! It’s the crucial moment!”
“I know,” her mother said. She bent over a little as if listenin
g to the TV set. A moment later, Ernest Borgnine and Red Buttons and the rest were banging at the inner hull of the ship. “See?” Melissa’s mother said. “They hear me.” She rapped again, and the characters on the screen went wild, banging the hull with pieces of scrap metal.
“Hey, your mom just rescued us with brownies!” Justin said as she left the room.
A blowtorch penetrated the hull, the survivors were rescued, and the brownies were passed around.
“Wow,” Sam said as Justin sank back down beside him on the couch, “you’re a regular thespian.”
“It’s in the genes,” Justin said. “My parents have been doing community theater for as long as I can remember. I don’t want to be an actor, though. I want to direct.”
“Direct? Wow—that’s pretty ambitious.”
“I want to make quiet little intelligent pictures, but I’d also love to direct a disaster film at least once in my life. Big cast, huge sets, explosions. And by the way, you weren’t so bad yourself, Ms. Winters.”
Sam smiled, hoping he didn’t have brownie smeared on his teeth. “I’ve been told I give good heart attack.”
“She’s great in Night of the Hunter. Ever seen it?”
“No. Was it a disaster movie?”
“Well, that depends on who you ask. The studio would say yes. But it’s great. There’s this amazing underwater shot of Shelley Winters dead in her convertible at the bottom of a lake. How cool is that?”
“I’ll have to rent it.”
“We’ll watch it together,” Justin said. “I could see it a hundred times.” He bit into his brownie.
Sam caught Melissa’s eye across the room, and she grinned, making him nervous.
After the brownies and popcorn were gone, they were all getting ready to leave when she tapped Sam on the shoulder and whispered, “Why don’t you give Justin your e-mail address?”
“Huh?” Sam asked.
“He gave you his at the mall. You should give him yours so you guys can get together—it would be like the reunion of Reverend Scott and Belle Rosen in the afterlife.”
