Labor Day

by Joyce Maynard

  In the movie, Bonnie and Clyde fell in love. They drove all around the place, holding up banks and stores and living out of their car. The odd thing was, Clyde couldn’t even have sex with Bonnie. He had some kind of phobia about that, but even without actually doing it, she still lost her perspective, just from the sex appeal. In the end they got killed. This person they thought was their friend, who was part of their gang, betrayed them to keep from going to prison.

  There’s this scene at the end of the movie where the federal agents track them down and ambush them, Eleanor said. The part where Bonnie gets killed, there’s so much blood my mother couldn’t even watch it on the video, but I did. It wasn’t even like a single shot that got her. They had these machine guns, and her body started jumping all around the seat of the car going into spasms, while the bullets keep hitting her in new places, and you could see the blood seeping through her dress.

  Bonnie was played by Faye Dunaway, she said. She’s very striking. In the movie, she wore amazing clothes. Not so much the dress she had on when they shot her, but some of her other outfits.

  I don’t think it would be a very good idea, me renting this movie, I told Eleanor. If my mother and Frank saw me watching it, they might get the wrong idea.

  I didn’t actually want to see it myself, anyway. Thinking about the scene she described, where Bonnie gets shot, I knew I’d be more like Eleanor’s mother. Especially since it might bring to mind the current situation.

  Can you imagine if your mom got killed in an ambush? Eleanor said. And you were right there watching it. They probably wouldn’t shoot at you since you’re a kid, but you’d see the whole thing. It could be extremely traumatic.

  We were still standing outside the video store when she said this. A woman walked past, pushing a stroller. A man dropped a movie in the slot. The heat seemed to be radiating from the sidewalk. Hot enough to fry an egg, I’d heard somebody say one time. Like the tits on a Las Vegas showgirl. Your brain on drugs. We had only been out of the air-conditioning a few minutes and already my shirt was sticking to my skin.

  Eleanor had put her sunglasses on—very large, round sunglasses that covered half her face, and for a minute she just looked at me, though the sunglasses were so dark I couldn’t see her eyes. Then she reached out one long thin arm and touched my face. Her wrist was as thin as a broom handle. With a ball-point pen, probably, she had drawn a dotted line, and the words written on her skin, Cut here.

  I have this really weird feeling, Eleanor said. There’s this thing I keep wanting to do only you’d think I was strange, but I don’t even care.

  I don’t think you’re strange, I said. I tried not to ever lie, but this was an exception.

  She took off her glasses and folded them into her shoulder bag. She looked around briefly. She licked her lips. Then she leaned over and kissed me.

  I bet you never did that before, she said. Now you’ll always remember, I was the first girl you ever kissed.

  IT WAS ALMOST FIVE O’CLOCK WHEN I got home. My mother and Frank were sitting on the back porch drinking lemonade. Her shoes were off and she was holding a bottle of nail polish. Her legs were stretched out across his lap and he was painting her toenails red.

  Your father called, my mother told me. He’ll be over in half an hour. I was starting to get worried you might not make it back in time.

  I told her I’d be ready and went upstairs to take a shower. Frank’s razor was there now. Also the shaving cream. A few black hairs circling the place where the water drained out. This was what it felt like, having a man in the house.

  I wondered if they’d taken a shower together while I was gone. People did that in movies. I pictured him coming up behind her, putting his arm around her neck, kissing her in that place he left the mark. His tongue in her mouth the way Eleanor had put her tongue in mine.

  Water running down her face. Running off her breasts. She put her hand on him. That place I was touching now, on my own body.

  I thought about Eleanor, and Rachel, and Ms. Evenrud, my social studies teacher from last year, who left the top two buttons on her shirt unbuttoned. I thought about Kate Jackson on Charlie’s Angels and a time I was at the town pool when a girl who was someone’s babysitter had come out of the water with the two-year-old and didn’t notice the top of her bathing suit had gotten pulled down, so part of her nipple showed.

  The noises Frank and my mother made in the night. Imagining that it was my bed banging against the wall, not hers. Eleanor in it, only a less skinny version of her. This one had breasts that rounded out, not a lot, but slightly. As I touched them, that song my mother always played was coming through the wall.

  Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river.

  There was a way of listening to music where, in one way or another, practically every single thing they sang was about sex. There was a way of looking at the world where practically every single thing that happened had some kind of double meaning.

  I could hear Frank outside, washing the paintbrushes. When my father came by, he’d lie low. Not that my father ever stayed long. I tried to be out the door before he even made it to the front step, to keep the two of them—my father and my mother—from saying anything to each other. Or not saying anything, which was what usually happened, which was the worst.

  Normally, I would have just wrapped a towel around my waist and walked through the hall to my room that way. But with Frank here, I felt shy about my thin, unmuscled chest, my narrow shoulders. He could pick me up and crush me if he wanted.

  I could crush him too. A different way.

  When are you going to call them? Eleanor asked me. The police.

  Later I guess. I have to think about it.

  I wished I didn’t, but I couldn’t get the picture out of my head, of my mother sitting at the kitchen table, him setting the coffee next to her. No big deal. He had just buttered the biscuit for her, though carefully. Doing that thing he showed us, pulling it apart instead of slicing, so there was more surface area for the butter to sink in. When she took a bite, a small dot of jam had stuck to her cheek. He had dipped his napkin in his water glass and dabbed the spot. Her eyes, when he touched her, had this look. Like a person who’s been wandering in the desert a long time, and finally, there’s water.

  Breakfast, he said. Who needs anything more than this?

  Remember this moment, she said.

  CHAPTER 17

  MY FATHER AND MARJORIE HAD BOUGHT a minivan, where the back door slid open instead of swinging out the way it did on our old station wagon. This type of vehicle had only recently come on the market, which meant my father and Marjorie had been on a waiting list for a couple of months before one became available. When it did, the model that showed up at the Dodge dealership had been a kind of maroon color that Marjorie didn’t like. She wanted white, because an article she’d read someplace had reported that white cars were the least likely to get into accidents.

  Richard and Chloe are my precious cargo, she said. There had been a pause before she added what came next. And Henry of course.

  In the end they took the maroon one. Your father has a perfect driving record, Marjorie pointed out, as if any of us was worried about getting killed on the highway. In my case, my worries had more to do with not going out in cars. Staying home all the time was the worry. Not that going to Friendly’s with my father and Marjorie was my idea of a great outing.

  They always pulled up in front of my mother’s house at five thirty on the dot. I was waiting on the front step for them. This time, in particular, I didn’t want to risk my father coming all the way up the walk to the door and seeing inside.

  Richard was sitting in the back next to Chloe in her car seat, listening to a CD with headphones on. He didn’t look up when I got in, but Chloe did. She had started to say a few words by this time. She had a piece of banana in her hand, that she was partly eating and mostly smearing over her face.

  Give your brother a kiss, kidlets, Marjorie said.


  That’s OK, I told her. It’s the thought that counts.

  What do you think about this heat, son? my father said. Good thing we went for the aircon option on the Caravan. A weekend like this, all I want to do is stay in the car.

  Smart thinking, I said.

  How’s your mother doing, Henry? Marjorie said. The voice she used when she asked about my mother sounded like she was asking about a person who had cancer.

  Great, I told her.

  If there was one person in the universe I didn’t feel like filling in on the topic of my mother, Marjorie was it.

  Now that school’s starting, it would be a great time for your mom to find a job, Marjorie said. With all the college kids going back to school and so forth. Waitressing a few nights a week or something along those lines. Just to get her out of the house a bit. Bring in a little cash.

  She has a job already, I said.

  I know. The vitamins. I was thinking, maybe something a little more dependable.

  So, son, my father said. Seventh grade. How about that?

  There wasn’t much to say, so I didn’t.

  Richard’s been thinking of going out for lacrosse this season, haven’t you, Rich? my father said.

  In the seat next to me, Richard was nodding his head to some song none of the rest of us could hear. If he knew my father had asked him a question, he gave no sign.

  How about you, old pal? my father continued. Lacrosse could be good. Then there’s soccer. Probably not football, until you put a little more meat on those bones, huh?

  Probably not football anytime in the next century, I said. Probably not lacrosse either.

  I was thinking about signing up for the modern dance group, I told him.

  Just to see his reaction.

  I’m not sure that would be such a good move, my father said. I know how your mother feels about dancing, but people might get the wrong idea about you.

  Wrong idea?

  What your father’s trying to say is, they might think you were gay, Marjorie said.

  Or they might just think I wanted to hang around a lot of girls in leotards, I told her. Richard looked up when I said that, which made me think he’d probably been hearing everything. He just preferred to stay out of it, which was understandable.

  We had reached Friendly’s now. Richard jumped out his side of the van.

  Can you get your sister for me? Marjorie said.

  I had figured out some time ago that this was part of her strategy for fostering a relationship between me and Chloe.

  Maybe you should take her, I said. I think she’s got something in her diaper.

  I always ordered the same thing: a hamburger and fries. Richard got a cheeseburger. My father got a steak. Marjorie, who watched her weight, got the Healthy Living Special of a salad and fish.

  So, are you munchkins looking forward to being back in school? she said.

  Not particularly.

  But once things get started you’ll get into the swing of things. See all your friends again.

  Yup.

  Before you know it, you two boys will probably start going out on dates, she said. A couple of lady-killers like you. If I was still in seventh grade, I’d think you were the cutest.

  Gross, Mom, said Richard. Anyway, if you were still in seventh grade, I wouldn’t be born. Or if I was, and you thought I was so cute, that would be incest.

  Where do they learn these words? Marjorie said.

  She had a whole other voice talking to my father than the one she used for Richard and Chloe and me, which was also a different voice from the one she used when the topic of my mother came up.

  Marjorie’s got a point, my father said. You two are reaching that stage of life. The wild and wonderful world of puberty, so they say. The time is probably coming for us to have a little man-to-man talk about all of that.

  I had that already, with my real dad, Richard said.

  That just leaves you and me then, I guess, son, my father said.

  It’s OK, I told him. I’m up to speed.

  I’m sure your mother’s given you the basics, but there are some things a guy needs to find out from a man. It can be difficult if you don’t have a man around the house.

  There is one , I yelled, but in my head. It can also be difficult if you do have a man around the house, if he’s banging the headboard of your mother’s bed up against the wall every night. If he’s in the shower with her. They were probably home at this very moment, doing it.

  The waitress came over with the dessert menus and cleared away our plates.

  Isn’t this great? Marjorie said. Getting the whole family around the table like this. You boys getting to spend time together.

  Richard had his headphones on again. Chloe had her hand on my ear. She was pulling it.

  So who’s got room for a sundae? my father said.

  Only he and the baby did, though hers mostly ended up on her face. I was already thinking about how they would want me to kiss her good-bye when we got back to the house. I would have to find a spot where there wasn’t any chocolate sauce, like the back of her head or her elbow. And then get out of there as quickly as possible.

  Frank was washing the dishes when I got back in the house. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table with her feet on a chair.

  Your mother’s some kind of dancer, he said. I couldn’t keep up with her. Most people wouldn’t try the Lindy in this weather. But most people aren’t her.

  Her shoes—her dancing shoes—lay on the floor under the table. Her hair looked damp—maybe from the dancing, maybe from living. She was drinking a glass of wine, but when I came in the room she set it down.

  Come here. I want to talk to you.

  I wondered if she’d been reading my thoughts. For so long it had been just the two of us, maybe she’d figured out what I’d been thinking about, my plan. Maybe she knew what I’d been talking about with Eleanor, the call to the hotline. I would deny everything, but my mother would know the truth.

  For a moment I imagined what would happen then. Frank tying me up. Not with scarves: with rope, or duct tape, or possibly a combination. I couldn’t really imagine my mother letting Frank do something like that, except that Eleanor said when sex entered into the picture, everything changed. Look at Patty Hearst, robbing that bank, even though her parents back home were rich. Look at those hippie women who got hooked up with Charles Manson and before you knew it they were slaughtering pigs and murdering people. It was sex that pushed them all over the edge.

  Frank has asked me to marry him, she said.

  I know it’s an unusual situation. There are some problems. It isn’t news to any of us that life is complicated.

  I understand you haven’t known me long, Henry, Frank said. You could have the wrong impression. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.

  After your father left, my mother said, I was thinking I’d be on my own forever. I didn’t think I’d ever care about anyone else again, she said. Anyone besides you. I wasn’t expecting I could ever feel hopeful about anything ever again.

  I’d never get between you and your mother, Frank said. But I think we could be a family.

  I wanted to ask how that was supposed to happen, with them off on Prince Edward Island and me having dinner every night with my father and Marjorie and her precious cargo who were too good to ride in any car unless it was white? I wanted to say, Maybe you’d better think about what happened, the last time this guy had a family, Mom. Seems like his record’s not so great in the family department.

  But even then, mad as I was, as well as scared, I knew that wasn’t fair. Frank wasn’t a murderer. I just didn’t want him to take my mother away and leave me.

  We have to go away, my mother said. We’d have to live under a different identity. Start over with different names.

  Him and her, in other words. The two of them. Disappearing.

  The truth was, I’d dreamed about doing that. Sometimes, sitting at the Siberia table at school, I had imagined how it
would be if NASA asked for volunteers to go live on some whole different planet, or we’d join the Peace Corps, or go work with Mother Teresa in India, or we joined the Witness Protection Program where we’d get plastic surgery to change our faces and identity cards with all new names on them. They’d tell my father I died in a tragic fire. He’d be sad but he’d get over it. Marjorie would be happy. No more child support.

  We’re thinking Canada would be good, she said. They speak English, and we don’t need passports to get across the border. I have a little money. Actually, Frank does too, from his grandmother’s property, only if he tried to get at it they’d find him so we can’t touch that.

  All this time, I hadn’t said anything. I was looking at her hands. Remembering how she used to rub the top of my head when we sat on the couch together. She reached out to touch my hair now too, but I pushed her away.

  That’s great, I said. Have a wonderful trip. I guess I’ll see you around. Sometime in the future, huh?

  What are you talking about? she said. We’re all going away, you big dope. How could I ever live without you?

  So I’d been wrong that they were leaving me. To hear her talk, we were going on this big adventure together, the three of us. Eleanor had put a bunch of crazy ideas in my head. I should have known better.

  Unless this was a trick. Maybe my mother didn’t even know, herself, if it was. This could be Frank’s way of getting her to come with him—saying I’d be coming later, only I never would. All of a sudden, I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I didn’t know what was real. Though this much was for sure: my mother’s hands weren’t shaking like usual.

  You’d have to leave your school, my mother said, as if this would be hard for me. You can’t tell anyone where you were going. We’d just pack the car and head out on the road.

  What about the roadblocks? The highway patrol? The photographs in the paper, and on the news?

  They’re looking for a man traveling alone, she said. They won’t expect to see a family.