Fast Lanes

by Jayne Anne Phillips

  “Danner? Where’s your term paper?” My soc. teacher was peering down at me over her bifocals, a sheaf of papers in her hands.

  I realized, fumbling through my notebook, that I’d left the folder in the gymnasium. “Sorry,” I announced, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Just a moment,” she sighed. “I’ll have to give you a pass.”

  Walking back through the same halls I’d just negotiated, I could hear the jerky movement of the big clock on the wall. Classes murmured, and a cold wind outside blew dust around the building. It was nearly November. My mother wanted Billy to go away to a military school in January; she had a dozen brochures she’d collected through the mail, and she wanted to take Billy to see a school in Virginia as soon as the gym show was over. Billy wouldn’t really discuss it but Jean kept quietly referring to his coming absence. Kato couldn’t know yet—she would have asked me, questioned me, as though I could stop what was already happening.

  I saw her then, standing alone at the end of the hall. She held one of the heavy gym doors open a few inches with her foot and watched Billy, her books and notebooks in a pile on the floor. She hugged herself, so rapt she didn’t hear me come up behind her. She shifted her stance as she felt my presence. Silently, we watched. There were spotters now, and the coach; Billy practiced a twisting back somersault with one, then two, twists. Stay with the doubles for now, said the coach, but Billy did a triple. In the air, he looked like a beautiful object, hurtling end-to-end along a fall of air. He landed perfectly, knees slightly bent, both arms thrust forcefully out as though he’d suddenly become himself again.

  “Danner,” Kato said, “is your mother serious about sending Billy away?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  She didn’t quit watching; she didn’t take her eyes from him. Her attentiveness, her focus, reminded me of my mother, but Jean could attend to business while the focus continued undisturbed, one clear note sounding under all her movements. She would have monitored Billy’s attempted flight with an unerring third eye while maintaining a 4.0 grade point in the class Kato had discarded. Jean wanted her children to be on track, but Kato was unpredictable; she had wild yearnings and no plans.

  I had plans. Maybe I was in training to become my mother, become that kind of supremely competent, unfulfilled woman, vigilant and damaged.

  Kato turned to me, her eyes bright and calm. “I like to watch him,” she said. “As long as I’m here, I know nothing bad can happen.”

  When I got home from school, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table, polishing silver. She had covered the tablecloth with a newspaper and begun with a stack of spoons. The pale salve of the polish was drying to a chalky glaze on the spoons, and my mother had lined them up in a row. The polish smelled clean and chemical, like evaporating medicine. “Hello there,” she said softly.

  I couldn’t imagine her younger, full of helpless, specific desires, but maybe she was a refugee from those feelings. Tom Harwin had died and my mother had stayed around town, married, worked her way through college. Now she had an advanced degree and administered the county welfare office. Today she was home a little early.

  She smiled up at me. “Don’t ask me why I’m doing this. I suddenly thought that if I did a few pieces every day after work, I’d have finished all the silver in a week. Good therapy.”

  “Then maybe you and Dad should polish those spoons as a team.”

  My mother didn’t look at me. “I don’t think you’re very funny,” she said.

  “Where is he, anyway?”

  “He’s downtown—where is he every day at this time?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where he is when he’s here.”

  “I can tell you that. He’s sitting in the blue chair, in front of the television set.”

  “That’s not true, Mom. Sometimes he and I are home at the same time, and I don’t even know it. I hear him walking up the basement steps and realize he’s been down there for hours. What does he do down there at his desk?”

  My mother held a soft cotton rag in her hand as though balancing its weight. “I don’t know,” she said, “but whatever he does doesn’t bring in much profit. I’m tired of pulling the weight for this entire family. If your father’s going to spend time down there, I wish he’d do a load of wash or iron a few of his shirts.”

  “It’s so dark and depressing in the basement,” I said.

  She touched the rag to a pewter-toned spoon, rubbing; it began to shine as the cloth took on a bruise of smudge. “There are lights to turn on,” she said quietly. “It’s not so bad. I ought to know, I sleep down there in the spare bed every night.”

  I nodded. “Why?”

  She looked at me and lay the polished spoon at my fingers. “What do you mean, why?” Then she was silent a moment. “I can’t sleep in my own bedroom. I guess I resent him lying there snoring when I’m too wrought up to close my eyes. It’s dark and the house is still and I’m awake, wondering how I’m going to manage.”

  “Mom, you wouldn’t have trouble managing if you’d forget this military-school idea.”

  She leaned close to me. “Listen, you must not discourage Billy from going. There’s not a college in the state that’ll accept him with a C-minus average. If he doesn’t get into college, he’ll get drafted. It’s as simple as that.”

  “But Mom, you’re sending him to a military school. It’s like drafting him two years early.”

  “No,” she said. “I know Billy. He’ll buckle down and beat them at their own game. And they’ll take a special interest in him, I’m sure of it.”

  “Right. They’ll see Billy’s excellent potential as cannon fodder.”

  My mother held one of the spoons near her face, polishing the cup of its shape. “You’re wrong. Kids who go to these military prep schools are just the ones who won’t go to Vietnam, unless they go as officers.”

  “Officers get shot, Mom. They get shot by their own men.”

  “Danner, will you stop?” She gave me the spoon. “Brandenburg has an excellent gymnastics team, and if Billy finishes well academically, they’ll help him get a scholarship to a better school than I could ever afford.” She looked into middle distance, her gaze sadly hopeful. “By the time he graduates, this war will surely be over. And the officers who teach at the school—I think Billy will find he respects these men.”

  “Well,” I sighed, “Billy loves a worthy adversary. Why do you think he wants Kato so much?”

  My mother pushed the bottle of polish to the side of the table. “I know exactly why he wants Kato. Everyone in town knows.”

  “That’s my point, Mom. What’s your real concern? Everyone in town? Why do you think Billy hasn’t just refused to go? It’s as though he’s testing you.”

  “He’s not testing me, he’s depending on me. He’s a loyal boy, and he’s in over his head. What if she gets pregnant?” My mother touched my hand with hers. “It happens. People’s lives get ruined.”

  “Maybe, but—

  Jean shook her head. “You don’t know all there is to know about Kato. County welfare has had a file on that family for years, since she was a child. They had her in counseling when she was just a little girl. Of course, the way the state counseling center is run, it probably didn’t do Kato much good.”

  “What do you mean? Counseling for what?”

  “Apparently the mother drank, like Shinner, only worse. Periodically she’d put the kids in the car and drive off. She’d rent a motel room in some town and leave the kids by themselves. Finally she left them somewhere in Pennsylvania and didn’t come back.”

  “How old was Kato?”

  “Young, six or seven. Shinner wasn’t around then, but his mother took the kids. She was a seamstress, lived down near the tracks. She died in just a couple of years. Shinner sold her house and bought that run-down pool hall.” My mother paused, dusting each piece of the finished silver, putting each gently aside. “It’s not that I have no sympathy. I was in love young; I
know how it feels to pin all your hopes on someone. But Billy can’t change things for a person like Kato. No matter how old he acts or how little he takes orders, he’s just a kid.”

  I stacked the gleaming spoons carefully and put them away while she talked, one on top of the other. Their silver handles were monogrammed and bordered with delicate, minuscule leaves.

  “Danner, do you have a better idea? Mitch won’t discipline Billy. Brandenburg may not be the perfect solution, but it’s a way to buy time.” My mother looked at me levelly. “Do you really think I’m wrong?”

  Two years before, Kato had gone to gymnastic meets in someone’s parents’ car, an unofficial, lone cheering section. The “gymnasts” in those days were a small unheralded group of boys working out on the horse and the rings. They went to a state meet as a team and placed fourth, and the school bought more equipment. Jean took her turn driving the boys to practice when they were too young to have licenses or cars. Later she drove to the meets, and Kato sat in front between Jean and Billy. Jean was amenable but she seemed to view Kato and gymnastics with the same quiet concern, maybe because both coincided with Billy’s lack of interest in his grades. Jean wasn’t silent about that. You won’t get into a decent college with below-average grades or Don’t you know you’ll get drafted? Vietnam is on the news every night now.

  I went along to a few of the meets. One was in Wierton, a steel town in the southern part of the state. Kato was there, looking pleased to sit beside Jean in a nearly empty gymnasium. Risers were set up the length of the floor as though for a basketball game, and the few of us in attendance felt self-conscious. Kato looked uncharacteristically proper, her hair curled and sprayed into a perfect flip. Wierton had looked gritty and deserted as we drove through the main street, and the school was dirty too. Winter sunlight fell through the high, grimy windows in beams, and motes of dust swam in the air. All the gymnastic meets seemed to be held in secret, at odd hours, early Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons, in one deserted gym or another. There were no audiences, just the parents and a row of judges seated on folding chairs with tablets of paper in their laps. Between the routines they conferred quietly, figuring on paper. Scores were announced and marked on a blackboard. No noisy jostling among the boys waiting to perform; they sat still, concentrating, full of tension. It was a mysterious atmosphere, like the heavy silence that permeated the soundtrack of the professional-bowling show Mitch watched on Sunday television. The announcer spoke in a heavy whisper, as if the televised proceedings were forbidden. Watching Billy, I could almost hear that low, breathy male voice, commenting from somewhere beyond Kato’s profile. When she looked down at her hands, her blond lashes seemed to touch her cheeks. Jean sat perfectly still, holding her purse on her knees. In front of us, Billy performed on the horse. He was a beginner and his moves must have been relatively simple; to us, they looked complicated. Balancing straight-armed on the iron pommels, he swung his legs like lethal weights, as though the lower portion of his body could be manipulated at will. There was the hard, firm slap of his hands grasping the pommels, switching off, one leg after the other scissors-kicked high and straight. He moved with clean, violent force, splicing air. Then he dismounted, and it was over.

  Afterward, in the car, everyone was more relaxed. We were through Wierton quickly and on the way home.

  “Kato,” Jean asked, “how’s your dad?”

  Kato looked up. “He’s fine.” There was a little silence after her quick answer.

  “Your dad and I were friends in high school, you know.” Now that we were on the highway, Jean tried to clean the dust from the windshield. Water covered the glass as the wipers beat, clearing liquid runnels.

  “I know,” Kato answered. “I think my dad has pictures of you. You and him and another guy.”

  “Probably Tom Harwin.”

  “Yes, that’s right. In the office, Dad has a picture in a frame. They’re wearing football uniforms, and you have on, like, a fur coat?”

  Jean nodded. “Chinchilla. I saved for that coat for a year, working at the soda fountain.” She laughed. “I thought it was something.”

  “And the football helmets are funny-looking, different, smaller,” Kato said. “Dad has another picture too, over the file cabinet.”

  “Yes, he would. They were best friends.”

  “You ought to take a look, Mom.” Billy put his arm lazily over the seat and touched our mother’s shoulder with his hand. “Shinner’s got all kinds of stuff in that office. Newspaper headlines from World War II.”

  “Mrs. Hampson,” Kato asked, “did you know my mother?”

  “No, I didn’t. She wasn’t from around here.”

  We were crossing railroad tracks and our bodies were subtly shaken by the movement of the car. Gravel crunched under the wheels. The tall caution lights, their arms crisscrossed, blinked an orange warning as we moved on.

  Billy had bought a used car with money he’d saved cutting brush for the State Road Commission along the two-lanes. He picked Kato up every morning before school until my mother told him gently, “I don’t think it’s necessary to pick her up every day, as though she were family.”

  Sometimes I rode to school with him. The old school, where Shinner Black and Jean and Mitch had all gone, was still in operation. Country kids rode buses in from the hollows, and town kids walked or picked each other up in cars. Billy and I often passed the school bus, yellow and mottled with dust, full to overflowing, seeming to lean a bit with the grade of the pavement.

  “Billy, do you and Mom ever talk about Kato?”

  “No. Mom just complains to you.” He grinned.

  “I guess she has to complain to someone. She doesn’t seem to talk to Dad much.”

  “No, they’re not big talkers.”

  Town landscape flowed by. The expansive frame houses were weathered relics, their generous porches sagging. Now the outskirts of Bellington were dotted with ranch houses whose backyards melded with the long cold grasses of empty fields.

  “Dad talked to me once about her, over a year ago, just a while before she and I got around to anything that needed talking about.”

  “He did?” I suppose my surprise showed in my voice.

  Billy raised one eyebrow, his voice mischievous. “Mitch instructed me in methods of contraception. He said, ‘No sense getting into a hell of a mess.’ ”

  “That’s the truth.” I had to laugh at his rendition of Mitch’s tone, but the story made me a little sad. I noticed my father more lately, maybe because no one else seemed to. Since he’d left his job selling cars, he spent time in the office he’d set up in the basement. He was selling aluminum buildings on commission, equipment sheds, and he was home a lot more than Jean now. I asked Billy, “Do you think Dad likes Kato?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure he does. She told me he comes into the pool hall, and he always starts a conversation.”

  “How often does he go there?”

  Billy shrugged. “Once or twice a week, in the late afternoons.”

  “I guess he has some time on his hands.”

  My brother looked over at me. “Probably so.”

  “What does he say about Brandenburg?”

  “He doesn’t say. It’s Mom’s money, and he’s staying out of it.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Will you go?” He didn’t answer, and I touched the cold vinyl of the car door. I could feel the vibration of the motor through it. “Don’t you ever wish you could get away, anywhere, as long as it’s somewhere different?”

  “Not really,” Billy said, “not yet. But if I went, Kato could come down and see me. I could get a part-time job down there and send her the bus fare.”

  “How would you have time for a job if you joined the gymnastics team?”

  “I don’t know. Play poker, or pool, for money. I’ve gotten pretty good, hanging around Shinner’s.” He smiled. “Don’t boarding schools all have special weekends? Kato still has that white dress of you
rs. She could throw it in a suitcase and show up, if she could stop laughing at me in a uniform and crew cut.”

  “I don’t think she’s laughing.”

  We were in sight of the school and Billy slowed for the turn into the lot. “There isn’t anyone like Kato,” he said seriously. “I’d want to see her, no matter where I was.”

  I smiled back. “She’s dedicated.”

  My brother parked his car. A necklace he’d given Kato, a gold chain, dangled from the rearview mirror. Billy turned off the ignition and sat with his hand on the keys. “I told Mom I’d go down to look at the school with her, the week after the gym show, just for three days. If I really don’t like it, I’ll say so, and the thing will be over. If I do, well, I think Kato will wait for me.”

  “When will you tell her you’re going?”

  “This morning.”

  “Be careful how you tell her.”

  Those last days before the gym show, the girls phys. ed. department made scenery for the requisite last number, candling to music. Entire classes of girls would move lighted candles in choreographed routines, standing, sitting, kneeling, while music played in the darkened gymnasium—easy, inclusive even of the least coordinated, impressive in simulated night. We’d practiced the movements for weeks as a simple warmup, holding the flat glass candleholders, twisting our arms like Mata Hari’s. This year we were making scenery to be spotlit to an instrumental version of “Blue Moon.” “Blue moon,” someone always spoofed, “I saw you hanging around.…” The moon was a pale blue sheet stretched over a frame; silver foil clouds would drift across on wires. Kato and I helped cut fleecy shapes from heavy cardboard. The matte knives loaned us by the art department were dull and we had to saw through the stiff board. Kato didn’t meet my eyes; I knew she wouldn’t mention Billy in front of the others. I was relieved when I was asked to set up folding chairs for the audience—I knew I’d finish late, after the period was over. Kato would have helped put away art supplies and gone on to another class.

  Setting up stacks of metal chairs, I tried to imagine Kato next year, her senior year, without Billy. I’d be gone too, presumably to college—the thought of that unknown seemed clean and limitless, like floating in space. And Brandenburg, in the brochure Jean had shown me, seemed a universe controlled by a benevolent, all-mighty authority: the uniformed boys, the ivy-covered bell tower on the cover, couples walking under crossed sabers into a formal dance. And the gymnasts, who’d sent a member of their team to the Olympic trials, looked godly in their leotards—they were valued and privileged, they were protected. Maybe Jean was right. Walking down to the showers, I realized Billy would get away before I would. Just last night I’d noticed one of his library texts on trampolines, open on his desk to a chapter titled “Values: More Than in Any Other Activity, Trampolining Develops a Sense of Relocation.”