County Line Road (9 page)

“Thank God your father wasn’t home,” she said. “Why did you do that? What were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Jimmy said. “If Dad hadn’t taken my money — ”

“Don’t blame him,” she said. “He wasn’t in that store. If you needed money, why didn’t you ask me, honey? You have to take responsibility for your actions and the consequences.”

“You don’t get to talk to me about responsibility,” Jimmy said. “This is your fault! You stole the baseball and you stole my father from my mother!”

“Is that what you think happened?” she said. “He found me.”

“No way.”

“Ask him yourself,” Linda said. “But right now you need to focus on what you are going to do about this problem. I don’t know what your father is going to say or do when I tell him about this,” she said. “I wish there was a way not to tell him … ” She let the thought linger. “I wonder how your mother will react. You know how sensitive she is. This might set her back. Lord knows it will be hard enough on her seeing you this summer, what with you reminding her of Earl, that way you look just like him when he was young. It might be better for her if you stay here.”

“My mother is fine now. She wants to see me,” Jimmy said. “Just don’t tell him.”

“I don’t know,” Linda said. “I’m not sure about keeping something like this from him. I’d have to think about it, especially after what you said about seeing me at Johnny’s Bar. You’d have to convince me. Maybe we should talk about it over dinner tonight.”

“I have plans with Allison,” Jimmy said.

“Not anymore,” Linda said.

They drove the rest of the way home in silence.

Later that night Jimmy and Linda sat at a table in an Italian restaurant. Linda sipped her wine while Jimmy sulked across the table.

“Come on, Jimmy, relax,” she said. “Don’t be mad at me. I’ll order you a beer, okay?”

Jimmy looked at her but didn’t speak. Linda waved the waiter over and ordered. When the waiter brought the beer, Jimmy watched him pour it into a glass and waited until he left before drinking it. Then he sucked down half of it in one gulp.

“Don’t inhale it,” Linda said, watching his mouth on the edge of the glass. “I’m only buying you one.”

Jimmy set the glass down.

“It’s nice to get out, isn’t it? Well, you go out all the time. But with Earl away so much, I almost never go anywhere, despite what you may think,” Linda said. “So, you must like this Allison a lot to get in trouble for her. People do crazy things some times, like when they’re lonely.”

“Not like what you did,” Jimmy said.

“Now you listen to me,” Linda said, getting serious and leaning forward. “You tell your father you just made that up. That you were just mad at me. I was not at that bar.”

“No way.”

“If you do that, I’ll make sure he lets you go to Clemson.”

She stared at him, waiting for his reply. “Well?”

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Think hard,” she said.

The waiter appeared, and Linda changed her tone back to being nice and sweet. After they ordered, she turned to Jimmy.

“Are you going to tell Allison about the police?”

“No,” Jimmy said. “And I don’t want you saying anything to her. Got it?”

The food arrived and they stopped talking while the waiter set down the plates.

Jimmy waited for Linda to respond, but she just wound her angel hair pasta around her fork and smiled.

In the morning, Jimmy jogged to the high school track. No one was around. He liked it when the track was empty. It gave him the room to imagine himself as anything he wanted, like the winner in the Olympics.

He jogged a few laps and then the music in his head started and he picked up speed. He rounded the far turn with perfect stride and form, his arms and legs moving in rhythm to music only he could hear. He was no longer thinking about how his father had treated him or how Linda had set him up. He wasn’t thinking at all, only feeling how it felt to run. It was the first time he’d felt good in days.

He passed the bleachers and scoreboard, but he didn’t see them. Sprinklers watered the infield, the water spray catching the slanted rays of early morning sun. Behind the bleachers, vague shapes of tennis and basketball courts, a baseball dugout, and a line of hedges blurred behind Jimmy.

He looked at his stopwatch and realized he hadn’t set it. This brought him back to Earth, to all the problems he’d left behind, if only for a few moments. The good feeling from the run eroded fast like acid eating metal, leaving him feeling bitter. He wanted to escape but couldn’t. He had to fix this mess. He just didn’t know how.

He walked up the driveway to his house and heard his father and Linda arguing inside. He didn’t want to walk in the middle of it, but they came outside. Linda had her purse and ran for her car, crying. Earl had the cell phone bill in his hand, yelling.

“I’m going to find out who these numbers belong to!” Earl yelled.

“Go ahead!” she yelled back. “I need someone to talk to. You’re never home. And if we had our own kids, they would listen to me!”

Linda slammed her car door, backed out of the driveway so fast and turned so hard, she would have knocked Jimmy sideways if he didn’t jump out of the way.

Jimmy turned to walk away, but his father called him.

“Jimmy,” he said. “Come in here.”

Jimmy just stood there. He didn’t want to go in. It didn’t seem like a good idea. Maybe Linda had told him about the jewelry store.

“Let me re-phrase that,” Earl said. He exhaled and his tone of voice changed. “Jimmy, please come in here. I’d like to talk to you.”

They sat down at the kitchen table in a face-off like two gamblers holding cards they had no intention of revealing.

“The coach at Clemson called,” Earl said. “I told him you’d be there.”

“What strings are attached?” Jimmy said. He surprised himself when he said that. Previously he would have jumped for joy, but now he was just skeptical. Is this what it feels like to be grown up, he wondered, not trusting anyone?

“None. Just succeed.”

“Did you tell Mom?”

“I called her,” Earl said.

“And I’m going to live with her?” Hope crept back into Jimmy’s voice.

“I know you want to live with her, but it’s no magic place or some problem-free zone. There’s no such thing.”

“Why is that plaster cast here?” Jimmy said.

“What?”

“Here, in a box in your closet,” Jimmy said. “I was looking for the baseball after Linda took it. Anyway, I found a plaster cast I made of my handprint when I was in first grade. I gave it to Mom, but it’s here, and it’s broken in half. Why? Why doesn’t she have it?”

“Do you remember when you were a kid in school and you ran home on Wednesdays to talk to your mother on the phone?” Earl said.

Jimmy nodded.

“Well, did you ever wonder why you could only talk to her one day a week instead of whenever you wanted to? She wasn’t sick in the physical sense like cancer or something.” Earl paused. “She was mentally ill, and she was living in a facility.”

“No way,” Jimmy said.

“I didn’t tell you before because you were little,” Earl said. “You didn’t need to know and probably wouldn’t have understood the difference anyway. She’s bi-polar. She attempted suicide.” He paused. “It was called manic-depression back then. But no one knew because she didn’t go to the doctor. She ‘self-medicated’ as they say, with alcohol and yes, drugs. Things got bad. The fights were bad. I’m sure you remember, unfortunately.”

Jimmy nodded, taking it all in, dazed but he did remember the fights.

“Well, during one fight, she broke the plaster cast,” he said. “That’s when she went to live with her parents in South Carolina. That didn’t work. Then she finally checked herself in. I paid for it. It was expensive, and God knows, getting laid off when the airline went out of business didn’t help matters much, but I did the best I could do for your mother. I loved her very much.”

Jimmy suddenly knew why they never had any money, why his father was always mad about the bills. He wondered how his mother felt, living there. Did they lock her up? He asked his father.

“No,” he said. “She was free to leave whenever she wanted, but she liked it there. It gave her a chance to learn how to live.”

“Do I have it?” Jimmy said. “That disorder you said.”

“Bi-polar,” Earl said. “No, but I worry about Ritchie sometimes. But medication is better these days, and she is doing better, so there is hope for him, if that’s the case.”

“Would you get back together with Mom? I mean, since she’s better now.” Jimmy knew the answer was No, but he asked anyway.

“No,” Earl said. “That’s long past. That’s why I agreed to a divorce five years ago. It was hard.” He paused. “So when I met Linda, she was a breath of fresh air for me, a new life for me too.”

“But Dad, I saw her, that day, at the bar,” Jimmy said. He just realized he’d made up his mind to tell the truth, no matter what it cost him. “What I said was true. She tried to get me to take it back, to say that I made it up, but it’s true.”

“That’s our problem to deal with,” Earl said. “You want me to stick my nose into every date you have?”

“No,” Jimmy said.

“Let me worry about that,” Earl said. “I know you didn’t take the baseball. Here.” He pulled out his wallet and handed Jimmy his ATM card back. “I put some extra cash in there. Go buy yourself a new pair of running shoes.”

“What?” Jimmy took the card carefully as if it were rigged.

“And I got you something else,” Earl said and went to his briefcase. He took out a plastic package that held a brand new stop watch in it. “You’re going to need this at Clemson.”

“Holy shit,” Jimmy said. “Sorry.” He apologized for cursing. He took that package and pried the plastic cover off. He wrestled with it, and his father laughed.

“Here,” Earl said and handed him a pair of scissors from a drawer.

Jimmy cut into the package and freed the watch.

“This is a nice one,” Jimmy said. He turned it over in his hand.

“And a battery,” Earl said.

“Thanks, Dad,” Jimmy said. For a moment he felt like a little kid on Christmas, a good Christmas morning, before things went sour in their lives.

He pressed the buttons and it beeped repeatedly. “How do you turn it off?” It kept beeping. He picked up the instruction booklet and started leafing through it.

“Don’t look at me,” Earl said and raised his hands. He smiled. “It says it synchronizes with a microchip in some brand of sneakers, whatever that means.”

“Awesome! Dion is going to fall on the ground when he sees this. Ha!”

Jimmy gathered up the packaging, instructions, and his ATM card and headed for his room. He paused and the door and looked back at his father who stood there smiling.

“Thanks, Dad,” Jimmy said.

“You’re welcome.”

Later that day, Jimmy hustled through his shift at work, only passing Double A once as he stocked shelves. Double A wouldn’t talk to Jimmy, so Jimmy had to wait for a chance to talk to him.

When Jimmy saw Double A go outside to collect shopping carts, he followed him into the parking lot.

“Hey,” Jimmy said.

Double A ignored him and slammed together some carts.

“All right,” Jimmy said. “You may not want to talk to me, but I’m going to talk to you. I’m sorry about the jewelry store. It was stupid to do. I know it. I’m sorry you got in trouble too. Did you get grounded?”

“Yeah,” Double A said. “I finally meet a girl who actually likes me, and then I get grounded and I can’t go out with her. Thanks a lot.”

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said.

Double A shoved a few more shopping carts together, forming a long line of them. “Just think next time, okay?”

“Okay.” Jimmy helped him with the carts and the two of them rode their group of carts back to the store entrance. “So things are going good?” Jimmy asked. “With Anna? I’m happy for you. You deserve it.”

“I’m going to see her after work. Last night was the last of being grounded, thank God. I’m gonna’ show her my car. It got it painted,” Double A said and pointed out to the end of the parking lot. “Red.”

Jimmy saw a bright red car sitting out by itself, Double A’s Cutlass 442 renewed. “Whoa.” He peeked into the store to see if their manager, Brenda, was around and waved Double A back out to the parking lot.

“This is awesome,” Jimmy said. He walked around the Cutlass, admiring it.

“It cost me enough, it better be awesome,” Double A said. “But I’m really happy with it,”

“Some things can be made like new,” Jimmy said.

“How’s Allison?” Double A asked.

“She’s mad at me,” Jimmy said. “I acted like a jerk to her too.”

“Sounds like a disease you got.”

“I think I’m cured now,” Jimmy said. He told him about his father, the story about his mother, and showed him the new stop watch.

“I think your dad is right,” Double A said as he admired the watch. “There’s no place without problems. No magic wand to wave and Bing! Everything’s okay.”

“That’s true,” Jimmy said. “Do I look like my dad?”

“There’s definitely a resemblance,” Double A said. “And your mom. Why?”

“Nothing,” Jimmy said. “I better go over Allison’s and apologize. See if she still wants to go to the concert. What am I going to say to her?”

“Tell her the truth,” Double A said.

Jimmy started to unbutton his work shirt. “Life is coming back into focus. Tell Brenda I had to leave, will you? I might be back. If not, I’ll work overtime tomorrow.”

“Hey!” Double A said. “Are we on for the concert tonight?”

“Absolutely!” Jimmy called back to him. I gotta’ get Allison to go, he said to himself. She’ll love it, and maybe me.

Jimmy jogged off faster than normal. He was so focused on getting to Allison’s house, he didn’t see a Cadillac pull out of the parking lot. The driver laid on the horn so long, it sounded like a cargo ship coming into the bay or a train approaching a station.

The horn cleared his mind. Suddenly Jimmy knew what he was going to say to Allison. He was going to tell her that he loved her.

He ran faster.

Allison was slouched on her living room couch, looking as if someone had thrown her there.

Her mother stopped in her tracks right in front of the TV on her way through the room and looked at her daughter.

“I can’t see the television,” Allison said.

“Don’t you have anything else to do but watch TV all day?”

“No,” she said.

A knock at the door made them both stop arguing.

“Well, go answer it,” her mother said.

Allison sighed with exaggeration to show her aggravation, but she got up.

When Allison opened the door and saw who it was, she folded her arms across her chest and said, “What do you want?” She looked down at Jimmy from the top step.

“I’m here to apologize,” he said.

“Go ahead,” she said, acting bored.

“Um,” he said, stalling. He thought he just did apologize, but apparently not. “I acted like a jerk. I was mad at my dad and everyone but you.”

She cut him off. “So naturally you took it out on me? Listen. I don’t go for that ‘you only hurt the ones you love’ crap. You either treat me right, or you take a hike. It’s not like I’m sitting around all day doing nothing, waiting for you.”

“I know. I understand,” Jimmy said, feeling like a witness at a murder trial that no one believed saw a thing. “I’ll be out of here anytime you want me to, but just let me explain.”

She rolled her eyes and waved her hands as if to say, Go ahead.

“I’m sorry about what I said about you not running,” he said. “I just don’t understand. If you were good enough to win –”

She cut him off. “I used to run with my sister, Michelle. She had Down’s Syndrome. She would ride her bike alongside me. I was in track, so she wanted to be. I used to practice with her. She was really good, actually. She motivated me, but then she died.”

“God, I’m sorry,” Jimmy said.

“You didn’t know,” she said. “Because I didn’t tell you. It happened last year, and it’s still hard. I guess I’ve been depressed. My mother says I’m acting out, driving too fast, getting in trouble back in Oregon.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing much,” Allison said. “Well, a little bit of drugs, but that only gave me new problems. So my parents decided we all needed a change of scenery. Here we are. It just doesn’t change on the inside that quickly. That’s a lot to dump on you. You sure you still want to be here?”

“Yes,” Jimmy said. “I’m not running away. I’ve gotten in trouble, too. Listen. About your sister, I don’t know what that must feel like, but I know how I felt when my mom was sick. I didn’t really understand it back then, but I know what it feels like when someone you love is just gone. But now I have a chance to start over. If you want, we can start training again, when you’re ready. Running works for me. Actually, it’s all I got.”

“You’ve got a lot more than that,” Allison said.

“Listen, next week I’m going to Clemson,” he said. “My dad is letting me go, finally. Anyway, there’s a big competition at the end, and I really want you to be there. My dad made arrangements, so you could ride up with him and Rich.”

“I don’t know them,” she said. “What will we talk about in the car all the way there?”

“They’ll tell you every embarrassing story about me you want to hear.”

“You’d let them do that to you? For me?” she said, looking him up and down.

“I always felt like there was something missing in my life,” he said. “It was you.”

He dug in his pocket and pulled out a necklace he bought. “I got you this.”

Allison came down the steps to look.

When she got close, Jimmy could smell her shampoo or maybe it was lotion. Whatever it was, it was great.

“There’s the smile I love,” he said to her as she admired the necklace.

“Really?” She said. “Tell me how much you love it.”

“I love you. I’d do anything for you. I’d run from here to Oregon and back. Even if you went to Africa, I’d still get there. Even if your dad doesn’t like me.”

“He’ll love you once he gets to know you,” she said. “Just as much as me.”

“How much is that?” He smiled and pulled her close to him. Pressing her body against his made his mind feel hazy but the rest of him wide awake.

“This much,” she said and kissed him.

“There’s one more thing I want,” he said.

“You think you can push –” she started to say but he cut her off.

“Go to the concert with me tonight. I got the tickets.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, since you already got the tickets and all.”

“Come on!”

“I’m just kidding,” she said. “Of course I want to go! Everything’s going to be great now.”

At that moment, Jimmy believed it.

Just then a soccer ball hit Jimmy in the back of the legs.

“What the –” he said and turned around.

“Sorry,” Lindsay from next door said as she ran up out of breath. “I’m so tired that I lost the ball.”

“Sounds like you need to work on endurance,” Allison said. “My sister used to help me with my workouts. Want me to help you?”

“Yeah!” Lindsay said.

“Come on, Jimmy,” Allison said to him. “You can show us how fast you are.”

“Oh, yeah? The two of you against me,” he said to Allison and Lindsay.

“You’re on,” Lindsay said and laughed.

They joined Lindsay in her yard and let her boss them around to create a race course. Jimmy couldn’t have been happier.