Authors: Vestal McIntyre
Melissa said nothing.
“No,” said Wanda, bowing her head, then pushing back her hair. “That isn’t everything. I
did
know what Hank was up to. I did.”
The words of Melissa’s response were clipped and businesslike: “I don’t believe anything you say, Wanda.” She hung up.
W
HEN
F
RED
C
AMPBELL,
the principal, got the call from the Eula Assembly of God, he didn’t recognize by description the boys who had caused a disturbance—a tall Mexican boy and a shorter white boy, both athletic-looking, both “big boys,” juniors or seniors—so he went to the school secretary, Francine, who, having worked in the office for nearly twenty years, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the student body.
“Sounds like Winston Padgett and Jay Cortez,” Francine said.
“Who are they?” Fred asked, folding his arms and perching at the edge of Francine’s desk.
“Winston’s a wrestler, Liz Padgett’s twin brother; dad owns a trucking business. And Jay’s a basketball player. He used to live with Carl and Janet Van Beke, but this year he’s gone to live with his mom on the north side.”
Fred nodded. “Call them in, one at a time,” he said, returning to his office. “And pull their files. Thank you, Francine.”
So, in sixth-period English, just when Jay’s high was beginning to settle into a comfortable sleepiness, a loud crackle came from the loudspeaker on the wall, followed by Francine’s slowly and clearly annunciated words: “ ’Scuse me, Mr. Barton, Jay Cortez to the office, please.”
The class gave a knowing, approving laugh, and Jay, allowing an increased swing in his movements to express something between exhaustion and insolence, got up and gathered his things. “Godspeed, sire,” Mr. Barton said, bowing low as Jay passed, which caused the class’s laughter, not to be hijacked by a teacher’s joke, to die.
When Francine led Jay into Mr. Campbell’s office, the principal’s feet were propped on the radiator, and his fingers, spread thoughtfully, rested together on their tips. By the hot hiss of the radiator, Jay knew that Mr. Campbell couldn’t have had his feet there as long as his pensive air suggested. Without turning from the window, Mr. Campbell waved Jay into a chair, then put his fingertips back together and returned to his reverie. Jay sat quietly for what seemed minutes. There were pens neatly lined up on Mr. Campbell’s desk. Back when Jay took driver’s ed., Mr. Campbell had been one of the instructors who took kids out on practice drives. Jay had been assigned to a different instructor, but he remembered Campbell as peevish and jittery; his kids drove recklessly just to scare him, and he passed them anyway.
Finally Jay shifted in his seat and cleared his throat to remind Mr. Campbell he was there. Campbell swiveled toward him. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been trying to work through some problems with the budget. Must have lost track of time, there. I don’t believe we’ve ever met. I’m Fred Campbell.”
“Hi,” Jay said.
“Jesus Cortez.” Mr. Campbell pronounced
Jesus
in the English way, the son-of-God way.
“Jay.”
“Sorry. Jay. Looks like you’re one of our basketball stars. Now, remind me, Jay, when is tournament?”
“Couple weeks.”
“Yes,” Mr. Campbell said. “A couple of weeks. Basketball tournament is in a couple of weeks.” He seemed to lose himself again, and Jay shifted in his seat. “Sorry, am I taking up too much of your time, Jay?”
Jay shook his head.
“I am, I can tell. You need to get back to class. So then, let’s get down to business. Ginger Wallace from the Assembly of God called and told me you and Winston Padgett caused some trouble over there at lunch. Is that true?”
“We were just playing around,” Jay said.
“That’s what I thought,” Campbell said, quick to agree, “playing around, pretending not to speak English. Those Jesus freaks they got over there at lunchtime are pretty nerdy, I’ll bet. Real dweebs.”
“Kinda,” Jay said.
Campbell sat quietly for several seconds. Then he took a deep breath.
“Hogwash!”
he shouted, slamming his fist down on the desk and making all the pens jump. Jay was so taken aback that he half-stood. “Sit your butt back down, young fella! You just sit until I tell you to stand. The Assembly of God is a house of worship, and you were a guest there. I ought to suspend you right now. That’s what I feel like doing, suspending you. You’ve made a mockery of Eula schools. Do you think I like getting calls like this, from churches? You think you’re real funny. Well, listen to this, Bozo: if I see your face again, if I hear that you’ve caused trouble, even the littlest bit, cutting class or passing notes, you will be off that basketball team
pronto
. No second chances. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Looks like your English has improved. Now get the heck out of my office!”
Jay grabbed his backpack and left. On the way out he couldn’t help but give the secretary an incredulous shake of the head. Francine didn’t respond, just gazed at Jay emptily. The innumerable times Jay had seen this woman since he entered junior high she had always been cheerful, but today she was different—hollow in the eye, shell-shocked.
I have no pity to give you
, her expression seemed to say.
I have to spend the whole day with him
.
In his office, Campbell again propped his feet on the radiator and tented his fingers, assuming the position for when Winston arrived. This ambush method of dealing with problem students had come to Campbell in a revelation—had been
given
to him, he felt—earlier in the semester when he was dealing with a boy who wouldn’t confess to having spray-painted an upside-down cross on the back of the gym. It had worked like a charm several times since.
When Jay got home that night, Enrique was watching TV and Lina was cleaning the kitchen. Without a word, Jay sat down at the table. Lina took a plate from the oven and peeled off the aluminum foil with pincer-like, oven-mitted hands. “It’s hot,” she said as she placed the plate before him. Then she returned to cleaning as Jay waited for the food to cool.
“They called me,” Lina said.
“Who?”
“The office. School.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jay said. “If they want to involve everybody in Eula, why don’t they just announce it on TV?”
“Is this something you want to tell me about?” Lina asked.
He turned in his seat to square himself to his mother. “No, it is not something I want to tell you about.” He let his gaze linger with disgust on her for a few seconds, then he turned and began to eat. It was her fault, after all, that Liz didn’t love him. Why would someone so pure love the son of a wetback, a washerwoman?
A few summers earlier, when Mary Lou Retton won her gold medals in the Olympics, Liz and Abby took to wearing their leotards all day long. They cartwheeled around the lawn and assisted each other with backflips while Jay watched from his place hidden in the living-room window curtain. Liz raised her arms in a V, then bent backward slowly until her hands reached the ground. Nothing on earth could be more beautiful than the arch of her body with its crown, its prize—the pubic mound at the crest. She was more exposed than if she had been naked. And then her knees buckled and she folded onto the grass.
There and then Jay decided to keep this image safe. He could jerk off to dirty pictures and to images of other girls at school, but never to the memory of Liz’s mons. To this day, he never had.
He had ruined his treasure by sending those notes. What made him think he could touch her? It was the nature of his love that it would be spoiled by exposure, just as it was the nature of her beauty that it would be marred by his touch. Anything he would get from her, he would have to steal; yet he would kill anyone who stole from Liz. These were the facts that trapped him.
Lina interrupted his thoughts. “You won’t even give me a chance to be on your side, will you?”
“Nope.”
She wiped her hands on a towel and went to the living room.
“Watch this, Ma,” said Enrique, who hadn’t heard her exchange with Jay. “Pamela has gone crazy ’cause she can’t get pregnant. She’s gonna jump off a building.”
“Enrique, you know I don’t like you watching this
Dynasty
,” she said.
“It’s
Dallas
.”
“Garbage,” Lina said. But she sat down anyway and watched the rest of the show.
L
ina had rushed through Mrs. Hood’s house on several occasions in order to meet Chuck. Now, on an afternoon in mid-December, she gave it her full, punishing attention. She emptied and scrubbed the refrigerator, then restuffed it with the old and rotten food in front so it would be noticed and tossed. She picked up and dusted every piece of Mrs. Hood’s nativity set, even though it had so recently been put out that it hardly needed it. She got down on her hands and knees to work pine needles out of the shag carpet. She stood all the dining-room chairs upside down to scrub their feet, then dragged them to the living room to dry as she took a soapy rag to the molding.
Lina had missed confession the last few weeks. She had gone to Mass several times, though, and arrived early to pray the rosary. That, and cleaning, were her penance.
One of the many unjust differences between her and Chuck, Lina had noted, was that Chuck, during his workday as a lawyer, met with people, made calls, wrote briefs (whatever those were; he had mentioned it once), while Lina had long stretches of solitude in which to remember their last meeting, to look forward to their next, or, now, to miss him. She would allow herself no hope. Perhaps Chuck could consider what might happen “after,” but she couldn’t; it would be like plotting Sandra’s death. So she shut off parts of herself, the way poor people in farmhouses shut off rooms for the winter, to save on heat. She consigned her thoughts to her past or fixed them on the object in front of her, but, like errant children, they’d always wander back to Chuck.
Now she stood before Mrs. Hood’s mahogany sidebar full of dusty plates. She would prove herself before God by cleaning every one in ten minutes flat without thinking of Chuck once.
Here was a memory to occupy her mind: when Lina was a teenager, she liked to go to the Saturday night dances at the field house in Chandler. Back then, girls would still wear their mothers’ embroidered circle skirts and put calla lilies in their hair when they wanted to look pretty. Lina’s sister Ana, married already to a stern man who wouldn’t take her to the dances, would spend an hour ironing Lina’s hair and making her up to look like Cher, then send her off with their cousins, tears of longing and regret in her eyes. When Jorge bought Lina a Coke the night she met him, he took off his gray felt cowboy hat and removed a $20 bill from the lining to pay. He had come from Texas, a friend had told her. He was a citizen and his father was white. This was apparent in that he was the tallest man there—Lina’s mother would come to call him
el espantapájaros
, the scarecrow—and his skin was so light it showed freckles at the cheek. He was so shy that he never met her eye. He started the few sentences he spoke softly, as if he were speaking to himself; then his voice would rise as he decided the thought worth giving her; then he’d turn away at the end—it wasn’t, after all. Again and again, she put her hand to his plaid sleeve, not to flirt but to encourage him to turn toward her so she could hear.
“Do you want to see my truck?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He took her outside, paused to light a cigarette, then led her to his big blue Chevy pickup with white fenders and running boards. Moths the color of ash fluttered about as Lina and Jorge stood under the streetlamp in silent respect, as they would in the presence of a prize bull. Then they returned to the dance.
That summer they would throw blankets into the bed of that truck and drive out by Lake Overlook. They had no choice but to do it in the truck, having nowhere else to go. Jorge made love the way he spoke, turning his face away from her, folding into himself, as if the experience was, in the end, only his. And now she saw it
had
been only his. Chuck had made her realize this. Chuck never turned away, but, rather, pierced her with his eyes more and more deeply as he went on, daring her to stay with him.
“I love you.”
Chuck had whispered this after they were done on that last night together. She had always wondered what she would say when he said it, and when it happened, she had pretended to be asleep.
There. She failed the challenge she had set for herself. She had thought of Chuck, and only half of Mrs. Hood’s plates were clean.
The doorbell rang, and Lina retreated a few steps from the sideboard to look down the hallway, expecting to see Mrs. Hood, who liked to come home while Lina was there, show her pictures of her grandchildren and ask her to get things off high shelves, since her medication made her unstable on the stepladder. It wasn’t Mrs. Hood’s voice, though, that called, “Lina? Are you here?”
“Come in,” Lina said.
Janet Van Beke stepped into the hall and looked around with a curious smile. “I saw your car here, and I know you clean Marilyn’s house.”
“Hello, Janet. Come in.”
“I haven’t been in here in years. Carl and Jerry Hood were good friends.” She nodded approvingly at the dinner table, which Mrs. Hood always kept set, as if awaiting guests. “I was going to call you tonight,” Janet said. “Then I saw your car outside, and figured you wouldn’t mind a break.”
“It’s fine.”
Janet disentangled her reading glasses, which she wore on a chain, from her brooch, and when she stepped into the light, Lina made out what the brooch was: mistletoe leaves made of green glass, with a trio of berries—pearls, real ones probably—dangling below. She wore dark slacks and white walking shoes. Once, when Lina had been driving through the neighborhood early in the morning, she had seen Janet, in a gray sweat suit, her arms folded up like little chicken wings, “jogging,” although it was little more than walking, quickly, bouncingly. Still, Lina had been surprised; Janet was nearly seventy.
“How are you, Lina?” she asked.
“Good. Everything’s going good. How are you?”
“I’m well.”
“And Carl?”
“He’s very well. He loves this time of year.” They sat down at the dinner table, and Janet folded her hands, which, bony as a bundle of sticks, seemed older than the rest of her. “I wanted to tell you, Lina, that Jay was at the house the other day. He asked if he could spend Christmas with us. Has he talked to you about this?”
“No.”
As if she could lessen the discomfort of the subject by rushing through it, Janet rattled off, “Well, I told him no, of course, you know, in accordance with our talk last summer. It really should be clear that his home is with you now. We never discussed the holidays, did we? I don’t remember it occurring to me. We always sent him over to your house on Christmas, and now Jay’s saying that’s why he should come over to
our
house this year—a kind of reverse of years past. But for the sake of continuity, I said no, and in any case I felt I should check with you. Now, I wouldn’t mind, of course, having him, even though all the kids will be home.” She steadied her gaze on Lina.
“I think he better have it with us,” Lina said.
“For the sake of clarity,” Janet said, nodding. Then, after a moment, she added, “Well, I’m glad I did the right thing. Now, I better run before Marilyn comes home and thinks we’re having a tea party.”
“At times,” Lina said, “I’m ready to give up on him.”
Janet sat back down and refolded her hands.
“And that’s what he wants, for me to turn on him, and hate him.”
“Jay is a stubborn, stubborn boy,” Janet said. “Over the years, I spared you some of the problems. Carl’s gotten after me about that. He says I should have kept you better informed of the bad as well as the good, and he may be right.”
“Did Jay talk at dinner?” Lina asked.
“Talk!” laughed Janet. “We had to tell him to quiet down and listen.”
“At my house,” Lina said, “Jay never talks at dinner.”
Janet inhaled—to express her surprise, it seemed—then thought better of it and shut her mouth, her thin lips fitting together so tightly that tiny creases showed above and below. Lina could tell by her expression that Janet was angry with Jay. It was a motherly anger.
“Thanks for listening,” Lina said, moving to rise. “I guess that’s all I wanted, was to tell someone.”
“If Jay brings this up again,” Janet said, “I’ll be firm. But if you change your mind, Lina, about Christmas or anything, give me a call.”
A
T THE PARSONAGE
on Wednesday night, after their last church visit, Connie remained stiffly at the wheel as Bill gathered the boxes of slides from the trunk. She didn’t even get out of the car. “I’ll see you Sunday!” Bill called as he walked up to the house.
She lifted her hand and held it there.
Sunday morning either before or after the service, she would say good-bye to Bill, perhaps forever. He would go spend Christmas with his family in California, then return to Africa. Why hadn’t she gotten out of the car?
She picked up Gene from school on Thursday, and took him to the library in Boise. Seeing Gene from the corner of her eye studying his magazines made Connie feel less like a madwoman as she wrote down the number of every nursing home in Kansas City. Mavis, Eugene’s mother, her mother-in-law, would be in her eighties now, if she wasn’t dead.
Friday morning Connie rose at six. The time difference was on her side. She dialed every number, and when her fingertip got sore, she used the eraser-end of a pencil. The receptionists were hesitant to tell her if there was a Mavis Anderson living there. Some of them refused, even when Connie told them she was her daughter-in-law calling with urgent business. She could have predicted this; she herself instructed new aides never to give out information over the phone at the nursing home, as many con artists targeted the elderly. She completed the last call, then froze. It was at these ending points that silence buzzed like something ready to burst.
She got into her car and drove, not to work but to church. She felt uncomfortable about what had happened at the progressive dinner, but Reverend McNally was the only one she could talk to. And only by talking could she sort this out. She climbed the stairs and entered the office, where Sissy was just raising the blinds.
“Hello, Sissy,” Connie said. “Is Reverend McNally in?”
“Connie! Ya scared me! He’s not in yet, but he should be soon. You can sit down if ya like.”
“Thank you, I will.”
Connie chatted with Sissy, who switched off the answering machine, then closed her purse into a drawer, then turned up the thermostat, causing an electric heater that ran along one wall near the floor to tick and ping. Chatting seemed to allow Connie’s mind to grind into motion again. Only in the silence did it freeze. What she thought, now, was this:
All right. You win.
(
You
being the world, which had consigned her to a corner and withheld joy from her as punishment for seeking it so long.)
I will be less “exacting,” less “rigid.” But I won’t fool myself like the women in the divorcées’ support group. I’ll do it with open eyes, and maybe God will forgive me.
“Here he is!” Sissy sang.
“Good morning, Sissy,” said Ed, taking off his hat and hanging it on the rack. He eyed Connie, almost as if he had expected her to be there, and said, simply, as if it were a question, “Connie?”
“I hope you don’t mind, reverend. I didn’t make an appointment.”
“Not at all,” he said, and he made a gentle motion with his hand, indicating that he would follow her down the hallway.
Now that Connie’s mind was working properly, she realized that not only should she have called for an appointment, but she should have called in late to the nursing home. But unlike the other aides, Connie was never late. They could cover her for an hour.
Connie sat for a while before speaking, just as she had the last time. But now Ed didn’t watch her with an open expression, attempting to draw her out. He gravely gazed at his own folded hands.
Finally Connie laughed and said, “Do you want to hear one of my self-pitying thoughts?”
Ed gave a wry smile and a barely perceptible nod.
Connie gathered herself up, almost like a little girl about to recite a poem. “I look forward to helping my clients onto the toilet. Isn’t that strange? I was wondering the other day, why do I look forward to this, when it’s one of the nastiest parts of my job? Then I realized, part of helping them—” Connie breathed. “The old people embrace me.”
Ed closed his eyes.
“I’ve spent many hours thinking about our last meeting,” Connie continued. “Days, really. And what I’ve decided, just now, in your waiting room, is that I give up. I’m willing to remarry, even if God sees me as an adulterer.”
“Connie,” said Ed in a voice just above a whisper, “does this have anything to do with Bill Howard?”
“No!” Connie barked. But she didn’t hide the panic in her face. She let it betray her.
“Because I realized, in talking to Pamela Hendrick the night of the progressive dinner, that Bill hadn’t said, in his presentation, that he’s engaged to be married. He is.”
These electric heaters had made the air so dry it was hardly breathable. Connie’s nostrils felt sunburned. She couldn’t speak for a moment, too busy folding herself down into a little square so tight as to be impervious.
“I wanted to tell you that night, on the lawn,” Ed continued carefully. “Janey Tanner is one of Bill’s fellow missionaries. She’s in California, speaking to churches there. Bill’s going to meet her there for Christmas. They’re going to marry before returning to Africa.”
Now Connie was in control again, albeit from deep, deep inside, and able to say, “But Ed, really, this has nothing to do with Bill Howard.”
Ed nodded.
“I just wanted to tell you my decision,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Thanks for taking me without an appointment. I’ll see you Sunday.”
Connie rose and left, knowing already that she wouldn’t be in church on Sunday.
. . . .
T
HAT AFTERNOON, WHEN
the final period let out and the other boys ran through the halls, banging locker doors, shooting rubber bands, titty-twisting each other in celebration of the weekend, and the girls congregated under the stairs and by the drinking fountain, hugging their books like teddy bears as they gossiped about the boys, Enrique spotted Miriam walking through the fray alone and approached quickly and directly, just as he had planned. “Hey, Miriam,” he said.