Rumors from the Lost World (6 page)

“Go to the counselor's office for your appointment,” Mrs. Hanes said several days later. Distracted by Jamie, Diane stared at the floor, where a black ant made its deliberate way to a crumb.

“Young lady!”

She grabbed her coat and hat as she left.

“Dee, please take off that ridiculous hat,” said Mrs. Esposito.

“If you take out your eyes.”

“How can you hear me with that stupid thing on?”

“Excuse me. What did you say?”

Mrs. Esposito lit a cigarette. She wore a neatly-tailored suede jacket, dark green, which Diane wanted to caress. “You can be so sweet,” she said after a long puff, “but you're in one of those moods, aren't you? What's the story?”

“There's nothing to be done.” Diane stared into swirling smoke. “There's nothing to be done and nowhere to go.”

“That's a ridiculous thing to say, isn't it, Dee? I mean, where would we be if we all thought that?”

“Nowhere.”

“Exactly. Nowhere. We can't give up, can we?”

“You don't understand.”

“Well, maybe not.” The counselor stubbed out her cigarette. “You know, Dee, you haven't had much to say to me. Have you? Melinda died last summer and we still haven't talked about it. Is there anyone else you talk with?”

Diane touched her forehead. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“I don't know, maybe a lot. It depends what the story is.” She reached across her desk. “Take this glass of water, for instance. I would say it's half full, but someone else might call it half empty.” She sipped water and cleared her throat. “Look, Dee, it's not nice to have a father or sister die, much less both, and especially when it happens all of a sudden. I've had that happen.”

“You had a sister die?”

“Well, no, I was an only child, but my father died when I was twenty, and my mother not so long ago.” She stroked her chin. “They were sick, granted, and we expected them to go, but that didn't make it easier.” She picked up a ballpoint pen and clicked it. “I only want to help. If we can monitor these automatic thoughts you have, maybe we can figure out some sort of rational response. Your thoughts affect your feelings, and then your feelings control your thoughts. It should be the other way around.”

Diane breathed deeply. “What makes you think I need help?”

“Mrs. Esposito leaned forward. “The way you get sometimes. The way you are right now. The way you react to my questions. You do want to talk, don't you?”

Suddenly Diane pulled her floppy hat over her eyes and lowered her voice an octave. “I have the trenchcoat. Don't you think I should ask the questions? Where were you on October fifteenth?”

“Come on, Dee. What's the story? Let's get down to brass tacks.”

“Okay. You smoke cigarettes. Aren't you afraid of cancer? Think about it.”

Mrs. Esposito smiled tightly, pulling back her lips into a line. She glanced at her watch. “Of course. You're right. I should give them up. Anyway, it's time for the bell. You think about it too, okay, Dee? We'll keep seeing one another for a while, or maybe we can find somebody else to help.”

“Did you hear me in class?” Jamie asked.

“No.”

“There's, um, a dance tomorrow night. It's in the gym. Want to come?”

“No. I don't think so. But thanks for asking, Jamie.”

“You don't like dances?” Jamie kicked a divot out of somebody's lawn. “Me neither. What I mean is, what else you have to do? I mean, we can do something else.”

She picked up a leaf and pressed it carefully into the pages of her book. “I told you. I grow wings.” Why was she telling him again? It was secret.

“Oh.” Jamie frowned. “That's interesting. And I told
you
, I grow hair. You know we all have the same amount of hair? Only some of us have it inside our heads and some of us outside.”

Diane laughed. “That's funny, Jamie.” He glanced at her and she giggled. “You don't believe me?”

“Oh, sure. Can I see?”

“No. Definitely not. Why you have to see? You can't take my word?”

“Yeah, I guess. But I let you see my hair.”

“Let's forget about it. You have expectations, don't you?” “What do you mean?”

“Think about it.”

“Why should I think about it? Why can't you tell me?”

“Are you happy?”

“How can I be happy when you won't tell me?”

“That's what I mean.”

She tossed in bed that night, tried to lie still, but her body was taut, wings larger. And she didn't feel comfortable on her stomach. She turned on the bedside lamp and the curtains ruffled in a slight breeze. She listened for crickets, but it was too late in the year.
They've told me I won't have to come back here again. This is the last time I'll have to go through this.
The last time she saw Melinda, her sister had a load of books for the library. “I'll be right back,” she said. “You wait up and we'll make banana bread for the orphans.” Diane tilted her head quizzically. “Orphans?” “You know,” Melinda said, laughing, “the ones on the railroad tracks.” Oh, thought Diane, the cartoon we saw.

The memory made her angry. I've seen Melinda since then, she thought. Other people, no, but
I've
seen her. Staring at the well-thumbed notebook, she shook her head stubbornly and turned off the light. The library books, the last conversation, the way Melinda precariously balanced what she said and what she carried. At the funeral, clutching Melinda's notebook like a portable altar, deliberately impersonal, one of the few without tears, Diane was detached, even serene. Mourners descended upon her. “They called for her,” she told them. “The death was painful because she could leam something. And my father didn't feel anything.” At the wheel, he had a heart attack, the car swerved across the highway's center stripe.

Come to me, she willed, sitting up in a half-lotus position. Instead, Melinda stood painfully vivid before the car with the library books. Okay, sis. I know things don't work that way, but give me a sign. In what form do you watch over me? Make yourself known, I will wait for you here. Her tongue swollen, she dragged herself to the bathroom for water. The light at the bottom of the stairs guided her down the hall, past her mother's empty bedroom, where two glasses glinted on a night table.

She gulped down the water and turned, to go back to her room. Instead, she slipped off her gown and opened the medicine cabinet over the basin. She took down a pair of scissors with blades the color of graphite. I'll trim my wings, she thought, beginning to cry. I'll have baby wings.

Y
our son's AWOL,” the officer told Leon Levoski on the phone. There was a long silence, some whispering. “He couldn't hack it. We don't think he's back here, but you never know with this type of individual. Hell, he could be anywhere. He might be in Canada, Switzerland, Hong Kong. Hell, he might be getting off the bus across the street from your house.” Levoski heard a rasping cough, the unmistakable whisper of a match close to the speaker.

The officer's flat monotone lay for weeks like too much whiskey on his chest, and now, wife in tow, he was drinking off his despair at the Stardust, a dive in Chicago Heights. Strips of braided foil danced in heating ducts. Mistletoe and holly fluttered over the doors. Colored lights winked from the bandstand, where The Memphis Hound Dogs covered Elvis songs. The overwaxed dance floor was empty, but two bleached-blonde women on the far side of forty, both tall, both pancaked with makeup, swayed at the uncrowded bar. They were lost in erotic contemplation of the singer and his greasy ducktail. The taller woman had a beauty patch penciled on one cheek. As she swayed under a fluorescent tube, the patch seemed to crawl up her face. Levoski stretched his own features into a contemptuous leer.

“What the hell, Marge,” he said, reaching for the pitcher of beer. “The trouble with life is, everyone stays home on Christmas Eve.” When he rose, the blood rushed to his cheeks. Marge stroked the thin dark fabric of her dress and reached for her coat, draped over their booth. The Elvis clone whispered “Love me tender” into the mike, then jerked his pelvis.

“Hold your horses,” Levoski said. “I'm just going for a leak.”

“Let's get home, Leon.” Marjorie studied her watch. “Paul might try again. He always calls Christmas Eve.”

“For chrissakes,” Levoski said. She still didn't know about the phone call. “Let it be. He's not gonna call. Let's just sit here and get goddamn drunk, okay?”

The waitress reached between them for the ashtray and Levoski noticed a dark, ugly mole on her upper arm. “You ought to get that taken care of, honey,” he said, touching the mole lightly.

“You a smartass, or what?”

The singer, still grinding his hips, belted into “Hound Dog.”

In the near-dark of the small entranceway, Levoski leaned his head against flimsy paneling. He couldn't get a handle on the thing. His own son, a deserter? “Daddy, where are the clouds?” Paul would ask after dark, his voice plaintive, barely audible, his Oshkosh overalls a size too large. “The clouds are still there,” Levoski said, frowning. “You just can't see them, kid. Why don't you go out for a pass?” Paul clung to his father's stocky denim-covered thigh. “Daddy, where are the clouds? Where do the clouds go?” Levoski pried the boy loose and waved the football toward the street. “They evaporate. At night they evaporate and go to bed.” He tucked the ball under one arm and gave up. “Let's go inside, kid.” But Paul didn't give it up. Dressed in jammies, his eyes were still troubled. “The clouds evaporate?” he said. “What's evaporate?”

A couple entered the lounge, letting in a blast of air from the wintry suburban parking lot. The man, in a gray leisure suit, opened the woman's fur wrap and pulled her close for a long kiss. She winked at Levoski. “What's up, big shot?”

He blushed. “I“m on my way to the john.”

“M-E-N,” the man spelled out. Beneath his metallic jacket he wore a silk shirt and a gold chain. “Right where it's been all night.” His face, equipped with a full moustache, stretched tight over his bones. “Don't mind me, my man. I'm real nice once I get civilized.” He held out his hand. “T. J. Raines.
The
T. J. Raines.” He nodded to the woman. “And this is Trudy, my nearest and dearest. Let no man rend asunder what Mary Kay decrees.” The woman slapped him playfully and pulled on his moustache.

In the bathroom, Raines urinated in fluorescent glare. Levoski, at the next latrine, thought about Niagara Falls, a trick his father taught him, but couldn't forget the woman's low-cut dress, her wink, her throaty voice. Hell, even his mother got loose on Christmas, wore red and green. Looking at Marge, you'd think it was somebody's funeral.

Raines touched his elbow. “
That
never happens to women, you know?” he said. He zipped his slacks and copped a stance before the smudged mirror. “What's your name again?”

“Levoski. Leon Levoski.”

“Bond, James Bond.” Raines whooped. “Shake it three times, Leo, twice for fun and once for good luck. More than that, you're playing with it.” Raines whooped again. His hair was thin, but each strand was carefully water-greased into place, much the way Paul had once done. Levoski's jaws tightened. Something might have happened, maybe Paul was wounded, drugged, unconscious in some alley dumpster, helpless in a jerrybuilt shack.

“My wife's in the bar,” he said. “You care to join us?”

In the entranceway, the woman pulled her fur tight around her. “Jesus,” she said, “it's cold. What you two been doing in there?”

“Honey, you know how they say
Pepsi's
the pause that refreshes? They got it wrong, sweetheart.” Raines laughed. “Anyway, you could've stood in the bar. I was getting to know Leo. Leo likes a good time.”

“That so, Leo? You look a little like my first husband, the man I never should have left.” She gave Raines a look and giggled, then grabbed Levoski's upper arm. “I need somebody to dance with, honey. T. J. won't dance to save his life. You like to dance?”

Their festive spirits were contagious. Raines got Marge talking about Paul, Trudy hauled Leon to the dance floor. A menagerie of sighs and sexy flutters, her hair all fancy puffs, her black stockings right out of Frederick's catalog, she melted against Leon. The duck-tailed singer smirked. “You know I once dated William Shatner? Captain Kirk?” she whispered. “On the dance floor, honey, he'd get as bothered as you.”

Levoski blushed. She reminded him of convertibles and palm trees.

“That don't mean you're not worth corrupting, honey.” she said as they made their way back to the table.

“After trade school,” Marge was saying, “he got with the wrong crowd, repaired diesel engines, and lived with the Incredible Hulk.”

Raines tapped his fingers against his shot glass and motioned for another round. “Instead of trade school, you shoulda sent him to one of those
prep
schools.”

“Prep school?” She squinted. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Now he's stationed in the Philippines. I'm worried sick.”

“He's safer in the Philippines than here,” Levoski said.

“The service was your idea, not his.” Her laugh echoed high and tinny.

“Come off it, Marge. He made the decision. Anyway, I just wanted him out of trouble.”

Trudy reached under the table and patted his thigh. “I wouldn't worry. He sounds like a good kid.”

“Anyway, what's wrong with the service?” Raines said. “You ought to be proud.” The waitress came to settle up and he grabbed the slip, smiling complacently in a way that reminded Levoski of his father. Levoski protested, but the other man merely winked, and Trudy gave his thigh another squeeze. “Yeah, my man,” Raines said, “T. J. always picks up the tab. If it ever comes to the nitty-gritty, I have a whole zoo of people I can eat out on.” He rubbed Levoski's shoulder. “Now you're one of them. Where you live, by the way?”