Linger (8 page)

“What are you going to do?” I asked her.

“He says we have to wait. He says when I’m eighteen if we still want to date each other, we have to tell Daddy.”

“That’s only five months.”

“I moved into Lingering Shadows just so I can be near him. I can hear him play from up there. He won’t even come up there now.”

“Maybe you should just tell your father.”

“What do you think my father would do, Gary?”

“I think he’ll blow,” I said.

“Exactly. But when I’m eighteen I can do what I want.”

“Like what? Start dating him?”

“I want to marry him. I could marry him.”

“Marry him?”

“You should see your face, Gary.”

“What’s the matter with it?” I knew. It was red. I could feel it. I was acting out what I felt: that I was being burned, even when she’d never paid any attention to me. She meant something to me just the same. She meant a lot.

She was kind enough not to tell me what was the matter with my face. She went on with what she was saying. “He does love me, Gary. When someone loves you, you know. But Daddy is difficult. You know that. It doesn’t help that Jules is opposed to the war, either.”

“Can’t he soft-pedal it a little?”

“I wouldn’t have any respect for him if he did,” she said, making me feel shitty for suggesting it.

She said, “Anyway, Daddy’s not going to think anyone is good enough for me.”

“I know.”

“He already told me I could only
write
Bobby, that when Bobby comes home I can’t date him.”

“Did he say why?”

“He said it wasn’t right for management to get involved with employees.”

“Bobby would never want his old job back.”

“I know that. It’s just an excuse.”

“Bobby will still be in the Army after the war.”

“I
know.
I’m just trying to tell you Daddy’s impossible when it comes to me and boys.” Then she corrected herself and said “Men.”

“But your dad seems to like Mr. Raleigh okay, so maybe—”

She shook her head no.

She said, “He’ll hate it. He’s already made cracks about his leg keeping him from making more of himself. Daddy says why didn’t he get a Ph.D? He says Jules doesn’t accept his handicap as a challenge; he just gives in to it, or he wouldn’t be teaching high school in Berryville.”

“I thought he really liked Mr. Raleigh.”

“He does. But Daddy’s son-in-law has to be a combination of Jesus Christ, Donald Trump, and General Schwarzkopf, and he can’t be seven years older than I am.”

“Six, in July,” I said masochistically.

“Right! … Jules is saving to go to graduate school, and I could go to the same college. I don’t need Daddy’s money, either. I’ll work my way through.”

“You could do that,” I said.

“He’s had a hard life, Gary. When the little boy was born that way, his wife said it was his fault, that he had defective genes! Can you imagine? She just walked out!”

I didn’t have anything to say.

“Gary?”

“What?”

“His hands tremble when I touch him.”

“Neat,” I said. I felt like I’d been run over in traffic.

“He calls me Ling. Nobody’s ever called me by a special name. Sometimes he calls me Lingerling.”

I had to look away from her face.

“I’ve never been in love. I’m just so happy.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“So could you handle the Bobby thing for me? Somehow?”

“You mean tell him?”

“You can’t say who it is. Not to anyone, Gary.”

“You mean write him and tell him you’re in love with someone?”

“Don’t you think so? Before he comes home and—”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Gary, I can’t keep writing him and sending my picture and everything, or he’ll feel I’m his girl”

“Yeah.”

“If he doesn’t already. How do I know that he doesn’t already feel that?”

“Could we hold off and let me think about this?” I asked her.

“Yes. Do whatever is right.”

“I don’t think you should just stop writing him in the middle of a war.”

“I know. I feel
awful
.”

“So just write him,” I said, “and let me think.”

“All right, I will,” she said. “And Gary?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell a soul about Jules.”

“Okay.”

“Promise me?”

“Yes,” I said, hoping the damn stinging behind my eyes didn’t develop into anything.

But she didn’t hang around anyway.

She had a date.

—F
ROM THE JOURNAL OF
Private Robert Peel

Iraq

We keep rolling. After tank plows make the breach lanes, they run right over Iraqi bunkers and trenches, plowing the men under.

Once, Sugar speaks up: Since
when
is it okay to bury men alive?

Lieutenant Kerin says what’s the difference if you kill them that way or with hand grenades or bayonets? We’re
here
to kill them!

Then we get the first taste of it, tanks in flames, sky coming apart with BOOMS like thousands of oil drums falling, exploding in the sand, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Then guns, cannons, rocket launchers all going. Gunners use night-vision sights to locate T72’s in the black smoke and dust.

Five
A.M.
Finally we sleep in shifts, hammocks strung inside the tank. I loop my canvas-pack harness around the Bradley seat to sleep, so I don’t topple to the floor if we start up again. We keep the engines at idle to be ready to move out fast.

By seven we hear the medevac helicopters swarming through the sky to lift the wounded out of the mud.

Low overcast and cold rain, and outside everywhere dead bodies are strewn, and parts of bodies, and there is twisted steel, wreckage, looks like a junkyard as the fog lifts.

The radio is filled with reports of Iraqi soldiers surrendering by the thousands. Marine and Arab forces hitting hard at Iraq’s 3rd Armored Division outside Kuwait…. War may be over!

Sugar sings with Garth Brooks on his Walkman, “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places.” Movie Star says he’s writing Amy to marry him as soon as he gets home.

We’re laughing it up some now, coming back down now.

In my helmet I’ve got the picture of Lynn by the toboggan.

I heat up MRE pork in barbecue sauce on the grill at back of the tank.

Like last night was just some nightmare.

B
OBBY,
I WROTE HIM,
I’m surprised you even think about Lynn D., since…

Bobby,
I tried again,
the other night at the movies I saw your pen pal with some guy and
…

I was in Mr. Raleigh’s class when I tried to write something to Bobby but couldn’t.

Mr. Raleigh held a debate about whether or not Sinead O’Connor was right to skip the Grammy Awards in protest of the Gulf War. Does an entertainer have a right to bring politics into things? What about her statement that nothing can harm you when you speak the truth?

Ollie Burns said, “Yeah, but what
is
the truth? How the hell does a baldie rock star know what it is?”

“Do
we
?” Mr. Raleigh asked us. “Or is the information we’re getting one-sided? We see videos of smart bombs hitting military targets, but none of stupid bombs hitting civilian buildings. Are we getting the truth from Baghdad?”

We booed him, except for Osborne de la Marin the Fourth, Kathy Wheat, and my date from the other night, Sloan Scott, who I found out was a liberal. She didn’t believe in the death penalty, not even for sickos like Hannibal the Cannibal from
Silence of the Lambs
!

She let me kiss her good night at the door, but there was something strange going on, since she heaved this big sigh as though she’d thought she was kissing Christian Slater, then opened her eyes to see it was only Gary Peel.

I liked her looks and a certain sure way she had. I’d made up my mind, too, to get a life, so I asked her if she wanted to celebrate Dave’s birthday Wednesday and she said she’d see.

When I got home from school, Mom was watching CNN, at the same time having a conversation with my father.

“You might as well hear this too, Gary,” she said.

“Hear what?”

“Don’t ask me how I know, but Lynn Dunlinger is in love with Bobby.”

“How do you know?” my father said.

“Don’t ask me that. I told you not to.”

My dad said to Mom, “I
know
how you knew. You’re up in Lingering Shadows working on those curtains and you’ve been snooping. I want to tell you something about what else
not
to do when you’re up there.”

“I don’t snoop! I was looking for a scissors and I opened a drawer and there it was: this poem. I blushed reading it, I can tell you. It was all about waiting for the day they wouldn’t have to be apart, and she could—I’m quoting now—she could be his loving lingering lover totally, or something to that effect. Her spelling’s bad.”

My father tried again. “I want to tell you something about what else not to do besides read her love poems when you’re up there, Wanda … Mr. Dunlinger says you smoke up there.”

“One. I smoked one cigarette.”

“He says he was up there last night and he found a butt in a saucer of coffee.”

“The rug men were up there, the upholsterer—it could have been anyone.”

“It was a Camel. He knows it’s your brand, Wanda.”

“Other people smoke Camels. Jules Raleigh smokes them.”

“Jules has no reason to be up there.”

I stayed out of it.

“Just be warned,” my father said.

“I think she wrote that for Valentine’s Day, for Bobby,” said my mother. “Did Mr. D. mention seeing
that
?”

“He only said to tell you he doesn’t like smoking above the first floor in Linger.”

“He obviously didn’t see it then.”

My father said, “She could have written that poem to anyone.”

“Not
anyone
is away but Bobby. She never brings any boyfriends around, either, not anymore!”

“That’s true,” my father said.

Then he said, “Wouldn’t that be something!”

“Our Bobby!”

“Well, don’t write him any congratulations,” I said.

“No, don’t,” said my father. “Let those two kids tell you in their own time.”

“I wouldn’t think of writing anything to him until he says something,” said my mother.

I thought: Don’t hold your breath.

My father said, “What’s your long face about, Gary?”

“I know what it’s about,” said my mother.

“It’s about having to go to work,” I said.

“It’s about your crush falling for your big brother,” said my mother.

“Oh, sure, she’s my crush.”

“You always act shy around her, and you get a red face.”

“Leave him alone,” my father said. “He had a date the other night with Jack Scott’s daughter, didn’t he?”

“She’s no Lynn Dunlinger, though,” said my mother.

“Wanda, for Pete’s sake, give the boy a break.”

“You wonder why Bobby joined the army,” I said.

“I like Sloan just the same,” said my mother. “She’s a very nice little girl.”

My father said, “What the heck is Bobby going to do with Lynn Dunlinger? He didn’t even finish high school.”

“He doesn’t need a diploma for what she has in mind,” my mother said laughing.

I left my folks in fantasy land and headed up to Linger. In addition to busing weeknights, I was working two extra afternoons helping to set up, so I could afford to hear more of Sloan Scott’s opinions on capital punishment and the Gulf War.

I didn’t care that she was a liberal. Dating her made me realize I didn’t have many strong feelings about anything. When she said, “What kind of a lawyer are you going to be—one of those corporate kinds who just go for the Wall Street money?” I said, “Well, I don’t plan to fight for the rights of serial killers like Hannibal the Cannibal.” But I couldn’t give her a straight answer because I didn’t know whose rights I’d fight for.

On the way home from that date, after we dropped the girls off, Dave Leonard said, “You want to make out? Say you’re pro-choice, against all war, thinking of becoming a vegetarian, and very concerned about the environment.”

“Some of it I am,” I said.

“But all you talk about is Linger.”

“Well, I work there.”

“But it isn’t the world, old buddy. This lady is the intellectual type. She reads and stuff.”

“I read.”

“She’s the opposite of her old man, too. Sloan’s into lefty politics, and she doesn’t eat anything with a face. She’s too deep. You want easy? Date Lolly Newman.”

“I like Sloan all right.”

“You’re practicing safe sex in its purest form, Gary. No sex. I really don’t think she’ll come across at all, because she’s got those principles. It’s the reason
I
don’t date her.”

When I got up to Linger that afternoon, Mr. Dunlinger was setting up an end-of-the-war pool.

It cost five dollars to enter. You had to guess the day and the hour when the Gulf War would end.

He’d dragged out an old wishing well from the basement and draped an American flag over it. It was sitting in the front hall next to the packages for our servicepeople.

Jules was already at the piano in The Grill.

He was playing “Joan’s Song,” and the cat was sitting on the bar licking her paws, watching him. She and Lynn watched him the same way, practically drooling.

“Gary?” Mr. Dunlinger called out to me. “Take a look here.”

He was waiting for me, all smiles, under a hand-printed sign that said WISHING WILL MAKE IT SO!

Then I saw the reason, under the sign, in a frame on the well.

It was an old picture of Bobby, in his green and gold Linger waiter’s uniform.

It said,
Linger proudly salutes its own alumnus Robert “Bobby” Peel, serving our country in Desert Storm.

“I think we owe Bobby this,” said Dunlinger. He was holding a Polaroid.

He said, “Get over here and let me take your picture next to it. You can send it to Bobby to show him we’re behind him here at Linger.”

I stood there while he pointed the camera at me, and Mr. Raleigh sang from the next room:

So linger awhile, let’s see that smile,