Mean Season (10 page)

“Yeah. Change in plans,” Max said. “Fun though. So I guess I'll see you around.”

“Probably next Sunday,” I said. “Now at least you'll have more to say, if anyone asks.”

“Oh, yeah,” Max said. “Nah.”

“Or stop by, if you want to. You know there's always going to be someone here.” I motioned with my head to Joshua.

“Hey,” Joshua said. “I heard that.”

I looked over and saw that he was smiling. It was the first time he'd been anything on the positive side of blank to me. I smiled back. If he didn't think these guys were hicks, I thought maybe he'd stopped thinking of me as one.

“I'd better go,” Max said, and I looked back at him.

Maybe he wasn't so obviously handsome as Joshua, but to me, he was almost. And to watch him stand in front of me, looking straight at me, I could feel that crush of mine rising up again. I wished I could squash it. I thought about Charlene, the ex-wife. I wondered about the torch he carried. I wondered whether his
Die Hard
invite was more about me or about Joshua.

“So, thanks again for tonight,” I said.

“Sure.” Max turned and walked to Scooter's car.

I closed the door.

“Leanne has a crush,” Joshua said in a singsong voice. Beau Ray sat up and looked toward the door.

“Shut up,” I said.

“Leanne and Lionel,” Beau Ray sang. Joshua looked at
Beau Ray and then back at me, then shook his head and shrugged.

“I'm going to bed,” I told them, and started up the stairs. “Don't forget to put all those bottles in the trash before Momma gets home, okay?”

“Sure, sure,” Joshua said, waving me off.

“You know who she's out to dinner with,” I reminded him.

Joshua sat up straight. “Oh, fuck,” he said. “Shh, Beau Ray. I didn't say that.” There were beer bottles everywhere, and though I hadn't seen Joshua drink from one, Judge Weintraub would not likely have approved. “Hey, Bobo, help me get these into the garbage, okay? Will you please?”

Watching them start to straighten up, rushed but laughing, reminded me of having Vince back.

 

The next morning was one of those early summer mornings that gets hot early, a reminder that the real heat is about to start beating down. I don't mind those days. I'm good in the heat, and I've always loved summertime evenings in West Virginia, after the sizzle of the day has broken, and the breezes drift through like the whole sky exhaling relief. At just six in the morning, you could tell we were in for a scorcher. I got up and walked out into the hallway. Joshua's door was still closed. Momma's door was still closed. I was starting to get used to the closed door routine.

I was almost at the bottom stair when I heard something in the kitchen. I figured it was Beau Ray, rooting around for some of the cereal bars I'd brought home the night before. But when I walked into the kitchen, the man I saw wasn't Beau Ray and it wasn't Joshua either. I must have yelped, because he turned around and jumped. He was in boxers and a T-shirt and black socks, and when he jumped, his feet slid on the wooden floor a little, so that he had to grab the counter to steady himself.

At that point, I wasn't scared anymore. There's only so scared you can be by a man in boxer shorts and black socks. Mostly, I was shocked. And surprised I hadn't heard anything earlier on. And relieved, too.

“Leanne!” Judge Weintraub said.

I think I stuttered a little and tried to back out of the kitchen. I told him to finish whatever he was doing. I told him I'd give him some space.

“Leanne,” the judge said again. “Let me apologize. I was sure no one would be up yet. It's so early.” He had a surprisingly dignified presence, given what he had on. “I wanted to make Lenore breakfast before I got going, but I can't find where you keep anything. Can you lend me a hand? Hell, you've already seen me.”

I nodded. He was right, and I figured that was probably the most uncomfortable things were going to be. So long as Momma didn't show up in the kitchen without a stitch.

“Coffee's in that canister. Bread's in that drawer,” I said, pointing. “What did you want to make?”

“How about coffee and toast?” he asked. He smiled. I'd always thought he had a nice smile.

“We've also got cereal bars,” I told him. “You spent the night?” It just came out. I didn't know if that was a rude thing to ask, but he was in our kitchen and it was early.

“We got in late,” he said. “Your mother suggested…”

He didn't finish, and he didn't have to. As soon as I heard him start that sentence, I knew we'd made it somewhere new. Like the whole Gitlin clan of us had been climbing a mountain for years and didn't realize we'd reached the top. Up, up, up, slog, slog, slog, until someone says, “hey, great view!” and you see that it's time to stop trudging, at least for a little while. And even if it's not a great view, you're looking at something other than the path ahead. My eyes welled up and I plopped down in one of the kitchen chairs. Judge Weintraub hurried over and sat beside me.

“Leanne, I didn't mean to upset you. I hope I didn't scare you,” he said. But that wasn't it.

Who would blame my mother for hunkering down after Dad died? There she was, forty years old and she'd had me to take care of—I was only fourteen—and Vince, who was sixteen, and Beau Ray, who was still finding his way to a new version of normal. And sure Tommy and Susan were out of the house by then, but you don't stop being a mother and feeling partly responsible for your kids' success or failure or happiness with an address change.

After Vince left, in the middle of the night with little more than some money and his class ring, Momma really started to clamp down. My curfews turned strict, as if everything bad in the world happened after eleven-thirty at night. My chore list filled up and my weekends clogged with housework and chaperoning Beau Ray. But that was good training, as it turned out, for when the deepest of Momma's blues hit a few years later and I actually thought she might disappear into them.

I'm not saying she couldn't have done better—that's beside the point. She made her decisions, and then I think she started believing that those decisions were the only ones out there. It's not like she was unattractive, just weighed down by a lot, and after a time, I think she got used to the weight and forgot what life had felt like before.

But here was Judge Weintraub, in our kitchen, after almost ten years of time passing. Here was Judge Weintraub breathing in deep and saying, “Hey, would you look at that view.” I wanted to explain this to him, but all I could manage to say was that I was glad he was making my mother breakfast.

“Be nice to her, is all,” I asked him.

“I intend to,” he said.

“You want me to help with breakfast?” I asked, standing again. I was a little embarrassed for getting all heavy at such an early hour. “She likes things barely toasted.”

“You sit,” he said. “You do enough. Come to think, why don't you sleep in a little? It's awfully early.”

I didn't know if I'd be able to fall back asleep, but figured I'd give it a try. Besides, I suddenly felt sort of shy. “So I guess I'll see you around,” I said.

“I hope so,” the judge said.

I went to my room and crawled back into bed, this time leaving the door open. I must have been sound asleep by the time the judge came back upstairs. I didn't hear a thing, didn't hear him leave, didn't hear Momma get up. I woke to the sound of Joshua opening his door. He was looking across the hall at the tray that had been left outside my doorway, set on the floor, a cup of coffee, a plate with two slices of toast, a glass of juice and an azalea flower from the bush in the backyard. It was all cold by the time I woke up, but that wasn't the point.

“Why don't I get breakfast in bed?” Joshua asked, and shuffled off to the bathroom.

 

“So you and Judge Weintraub,” I said, later, after Beau Ray and Joshua had eaten breakfast. Joshua was watching a talk show in the living room, and I'd followed Momma into the kitchen. She took a sponge from the counter and started scrubbing the sink. “You know, I ran into him this morning.”

“He said as much.” She kept scrubbing, her back to me. “You got a problem with that?”

“Of course not,” I said.

Momma put down the sponge and turned around to face me. She eyed me with the squint she always used when trying to suss out if one of us kids was lying. But I wasn't lying.

“Don't you?” she asked me.

“Why would I?” I asked her. “I like him. Hell, I would have introduced you two, you know, earlier on, if I thought you might—”

“I wasn't looking,” Momma said, snap like a door closing.

“He asked me to dinner and I figured it would be polite to go. We got things in common.”

“Okay,” I said, although by that point I had remembered how she'd been humming all the way home from the courthouse that day.

“I thought it would do well for Joshua. Figured it might help his situation,” she told me.

“I hope you didn't invite the judge in last night on account of the California crowd,” I said.

Her eyes got wide. “Leanne!” she said. She turned back to the sink and stood there, not talking but not really cleaning either.

“Are you mad?” I asked, after she hadn't moved for a minute or so. “I didn't mean it like an insult.”

“Not mad,” she said. “I'm just—” She petered off and stood up very straight. I knew what it was. Of course, I did. You don't live by a river without learning its banks and curves and how to read flood signs.

“It'll be ten years in November,” I said. “That's a long time.”

“I know,” she said.

“And I think Dad would have…”

I watched her turn ever so slightly toward me, and it scared me a little. I could see that she was listening hard for an answer, and I knew I didn't have one. I knew my own mind, but that was all. I guess with the dead, that's all you're left with—the minds of those left behind.

“You don't need to decide anything right now,” I said. That's what Sandy always told me, whenever I was wondering what to do—with a guy, or a job, or my life in general. It was like the chorus of our friendship, and when she said it, it always sounded true. I hoped it would then, too.

“I don't, do I?” Momma asked. She turned around again. I was surprised to see that she'd been crying. “It's a little scary,” she said. “It's so different.” She wiped her eyes and managed a smile. “When did you get so smart?”

 

That was Monday. Tuesday was one of my work days— Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings. I went in at nine like always, and spent the first part of the morning answering Mr. Bellevue's questions about Joshua. He'd taken to starting Tuesday mornings with, “So, tell me everything,” and he meant it. He wanted to hear everything Joshua had done or said or eaten since I'd left work the Friday before.

That day, I told him how I thought that Joshua was growing addicted to morning talk shows, especially Ricki Lake. How he and Beau Ray had played hide-and-seek in the backyard, but Beau Ray had hid back by the ditch, farther than Joshua was allowed to go, so that particular round ended up lasting near an hour, until Beau Ray wandered out again. I told him that I'd finally managed to send out new membership packets to the one hundred and forty-three people who'd joined the fan club in the previous month.

“You do live an exciting life,” Mr. Bellevue said.

I wondered what Mr. Bellevue had done in the past three days if typing out one hundred and forty-three membership cards qualified as exciting.

I had meant to grab a hamburger for lunch, but I got a call from the courthouse secretary asking me to come to Judge Weintraub's chambers soon as I had a moment. So instead of the burger, I made my way over there. I didn't know what he wanted. First, I worried that maybe Joshua had wandered past our mailbox and was headed straight for jail. Then I worried that some crazy fan might have broken into our house. Then I realized that it was probably something to do with Momma. I was afraid he was going to tell me that he'd changed his mind, that he'd realized it was a mistake—or worse, that my mother had called the whole thing off.

It put knots in my stomach as I got closer to the courthouse wing. Momma was probably too scared of the change,
I figured. It felt too different, and she'd decided to run back to the frozen-in-time way things had been for the past nine, almost ten years. I hesitated knocking on his door for that reason, but he'd called me over and he was a judge, which tops the county courthouse food chain. So I knocked and when I heard him say, “Come in,” I did.

“You got my message,” the judge said. He was sitting at his desk.

I nodded.

“Sit down,” he said.

I sat down.

“Leanne, communication is very important to me. As we go forward, I want to make sure that we're clear with each other,” the judge said.

“Is there something we need to be clear on?” I asked him. I wanted to close my eyes.

“How are you feeling about me dating Lenore? Your mother?” he asked. “Are you uncomfortable? Does it make you angry? Or upset?”

“Are you still dating?” I asked him.

“Aren't we? Do you know something I don't?” he asked. He sat up a little higher. As soon as I saw that he looked worried, I knew I didn't have any reason to be.

“Oh,” I said. “No. It's fine. I feel fine about it. I think it's great.” He nodded, but looked like he wasn't sure whether or not to believe me.

“And if I were to come for dinner during the week—or, say, if your mother were to spend time at my house, how would you feel about that?”

“Fine, I guess. Only it would be better if you were at our house, because then you could help with looking after Beau Ray.”