Criss Cross (10 page)

D
ebbie and Patty sat in a wooden gazebo. The flowering plums outside were covered with blossoms, as if a giant bowl of popcorn had spilled from the sky, which was blue, and landed in the branches. They were looking at the senior pages of the new yearbooks.

The seniors could have their pictures taken in different settings—leaning against a tree, by a fireplace, wherever they wanted—and they could wear whatever they wanted. A tuxedo, a football uniform, a leather jacket. A beautiful evening gown. A T-shirt and jeans. They could use props: a motorcycle, a guitar, a rose.

A committee of students had chosen a quote, from literature or history, to accompany each person’s photograph in the yearbook. They picked them from a book of quotations that was divided into categories like Music, Art, Sports, Intelligence, Friendship, Beauty, Sincerity, Humor, Courage. There were even literature-y ways of saying Headed for Trouble.

You had to wonder how some people felt when they saw the quotes that had been chosen for them:

“Strength lies not in defense but in attack.”

                                                     —Hitler

This was because he was an offensive lineman on the football team.

“But still,” said Debbie. “Hitler?”

Or

“He is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.” —Jefferson

and

“A nice, unparticular man.” —Hardy

“You can tell they didn’t know what to say about him,” said Patty.

“I think they should do haikus,” said Debbie. Maybe because of the gazebo and the plum blossoms and the sparkling water. “Then it can be about nothing but sound like it’s about something. Like

“It still sounds like there’s nothing to say about him.”

“Empty
isn’t a good word. It should be more like, ‘The page is waiting.’

She has hidden shallows.”

They fell silent, perusing the familiar faces:

        roly-poly, but graceful, how does she do that?

maybe he’s brilliant
sometimes friendly and funny
sometimes sarcastic
you have to check his mood before speaking
like putting your head out the door to see how cold

That sleepover in sixth grade.

The dance when she

The thoughts were that quick. But each thought could hold a story. Like

I went to a sleepover at her house when we were in sixth grade. Somehow I was cooler then, I think. (What happened?) Other people were there—it was a pajama party—but I was the chosen friend of the evening. I don’t know why.

She said, “Come with me while I shave my legs. “ We went into the bathroom and I sat on the edge of the tub while she shaved her legs with an electric razor.

“I have to shave them every other night,” she said. Wow, I thought. I had never shaved my legs at all and felt suddenly how golden and furry they were, like a bumblebee. I was wearing shortie pajamas that were my favorites, but now I wished that they were long ones, or a nightgown. Or one of those exercise tents that your whole body fits inside so you can sweat.

She looked so elegant, shaving her long, tanned legs. Expertly. You could tell that she really did do it a lot.

Later on, a year or so, we went to one of the dances together. There was a boy there, older, who liked her. She was so pretty, and she looked older, too. Mature or sophisticated or something. They danced together a lot.

When they sat down on the bleachers, I went over and sat down, too. I mean, we came together, and they were just sitting there.

She turned and looked at me and it might have been pity or it might have had an apology in it, but it was definitely Get Lost. Don’t be a child.

I sat there for a few seconds more, looking into the dark room full of people dancing while she and her guy gazed into each others eyes and palpated each other’s hands. Then I said, “Well, see you later.” I went to the girls room and looked at myself in the mirror. I thought I still looked okay. I came back into the gym through a door toward the back where it was really dark, and climbed up to the top row of the bleachers. I felt ten years old and a thousand years old, but I didn’t know how to be my own age. I had never felt that way before, but now I feel like that a lot.

Later, while we waited for our ride, she acted like nothing had happened. But it had.

That sleepover in sixth grade. The dance when she That quick.

The sparkling water, purple concrete elephant: Seldem Pool & Patio.

Other faces had other stories.

Out of the cocoon, something new: is this one still a caterpillar?

With the sleep-over, the dance in her head, Debbie looked at her own picture and saw a caterpillar.

When Patty looked at it, she only saw her friend. Her gaze bounced over to Lenny’s picture, and she smiled as she remembered how just that day in science class, Mrs. Lewandowski had asked her to find a place to plug in the overhead projector. All the visible outlets were full, so she had crawled under a table on her hands and knees. When she came out, Lenny was standing there.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Looking for an outlet,” she said.

Lenny said, “Have you tried tennis?”

She looked up from the yearbook to tell Debbie about it, but Debbie spoke first.

“Look, there goes Hector.”

“I wonder why he’s running.”

        “His bag is breaking.”

The bag was a grocery bag, but the items escaping from it—crumpled tissues, bent cans—looked like used groceries, also known as garbage. Why was Hector running down the street in this part of town with a bag of garbage?

His shirttails flew out behind him. He was too far away to call out to, over the traffic noise. It was interesting, Debbie thought, how you could recognize a person, even from a distance, and even when you couldn’t see the person’s face. Even when the person was scuttling along the sidewalk like a crustacean. What was it, exactly, that you recognized?

In Hector’s case, it was probably his hair. But there was something else, too, she thought. Something so Hector-y about his whole self. She watched him for a moment, wondering what it was that gave him away. She wondered if she had something like that.

I
t wasn’t that hard to make one beautiful sound on the guitar. The easiest thing in the world was to hold down the two strings for the ? minor chord and draw your thumb across all six strings, down below. A really beautiful sound. Melancholy, but satisfying.

Hector was developing callouses on his fingertips, which was good. He could play some songs and sing them at the same time. “This Land Is Your Land,” “Greensleeves,” a few others.

Sometimes he felt fine about where he was. And sometimes it seemed that there was no road that led from the church basement guitar class to where he wanted to go. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember where that was, or why he had wanted to go there.

But he had gotten into the habit of going into his room and picking up the guitar. And once he picked it up, he did all the things he knew how to do, then messed around a little bit. A lot, sometimes.

L
enny dropped his books on the bed and picked up a magazine. The creak of floorboards in his parents’ bedroom told him that his father was awake. Leon was on third shift, sleeping all day with the curtains drawn and waking up in mid-afternoon to the aromas of the beginnings of dinner: onions and celery softening in melted butter. It wasn’t a bad way to wake up. There was still some afternoon and a full evening ahead. Working day shift, you got home around this same time, but you could be too tired to enjoy it. That was just his opinion. Leon opened his bedroom door and walked the two steps to Lenny’s open doorway.

“Good morning,” he said. The afternoon light was dim and indirect on this side of the house, but it was enough to make him squint as his eyes adjusted. The movement of squinting triggered the tumbling down of a few more locks of dark hair onto his forehead.

“Good morning,” said Lenny. He had to grin at his dad’s face, unshaven and puffy with sleep, eyelids hunched together to keep out the brightness that wasn’t even bright.

“You didn’t get enough beauty sleep,” he said. “You better go back to bed.”

“I don’t think it would do any good,” said his dad. “Listen, we have some time before dinner, can you give me a hand getting that old washing machine out of the cellar? There’s a guy at work who wants it. He fixes them up and sells them.”

“Sure,” said Lenny.

They went down into the basement, which was more of a solid than a space. It was a Chinese puzzle made out of a haphazard accumulation of snow tires, lawn chairs, suitcases, cases of unreturned pop and beer bottles, picnic coolers, furniture and boxes of dishes from Lenny’s grandmother’s house that Edie didn’t like but Leon couldn’t bear to get rid of, along with boxes no one had even peeked in for years. Who knew what all was in there? The washing machine was roughly in the center of the whole mess, its shiny, rounded surface glinting out from under a couple of rolled-up carpets and clothesline props. Extricating it without causing the entire arrangement to collapse would be like pulling out the middle pickup stick. A really heavy pickup stick. Lenny and Leon studied the situation.

“We should get rid of some of this stuff. Clean this place up,” said Leon.

“You think so?” said Lenny.