Home Song (13 page)

“Erin, I don't know . . .”

“Don't tell me you've got a crush on him yourself!”

“Not exactly.”

“You do! Oh cripes, Chels, do you really? I thought you were just showing him around because you had to.”

“He's really nice, Erin. I mean, he's got manners and he's not loud like most of the boys. He's not the kind of guy you say ‘studly' to.”

Erin's spirits deflated. “Well, anyway, I just thought I'd
ask. Heck, I didn't know you were scoping him out for yourself.”

“I'm not scoping him out, and don't say that so loud. You know how gossip starts.”

When the girls had showered and changed, Chelsea said, “I'm going to take my uniform up to my locker, Erin. Meet you by the front door.”

“Me too. Three minutes, okay?”

They parted in the hall carrying their red sweaters and skirts on hangers over their shoulders. Around the corner by the first-floor lockers the lights were dim, the classroom doors closed and locked. It seemed so different here at night than during the day. Chelsea could even hear the click on her combination lock as she rotated it with her thumb. Her locker door resounded like a gong as she opened it and hung up her uniform. She took out a small purse, applied fresh lipstick, then looped the noodle-thin strap over her shoulder, closed her locker, and headed for the front door. On the way she passed the five long, narrow banks where the seniors were assigned lockers. From the shadows between them, someone said, “Hey, Chelsea, that you?”

She backed up and peered down the middle aisle.

“Kent?” He stood beside his open locker wearing a green windbreaker, jeans, and a baseball cap tipped back on his head.

“Hi,” she said softly, in a tone of pleased surprise, moving toward him. “You played a super game.”

“Thanks.”

“I can see why you made first string.”

“I had good coaches in Texas.”

“Mmm . . . no, it's more than that, I think. My dad always says, ‘You can teach plays, but you can't teach ability.' ” Dropping one shoulder against the lockers, she watched him
field the compliment with engaging humility. “Hey, it's nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I'm not ashamed. Just. . .” He shrugged and they laughed together. Quiet fell between them.

“Every now and then I'd glance over to the sidelines and see you cheering, and I'd think, ‘Hey, I know her. There's Chelsea.' I liked seeing you there.”

There was silence again while they let their eyes meet and part, meet and part, both still uneasy with the attraction they were beginning to feel.

“So, do you ride home with your girlfriends or what?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I drive, but Robby's got the car tonight. How about you?”

“My mom came to the game but she didn't want to wait around while I showered, so she went back home and told me to call her if I wanted a ride. Pizza said I could catch a ride with him if I want.”

“Oh.” She took a sudden interest in scratching the dial of a combination lock with her thumbnail.

He closed his locker door and set the lock, but they remained as they were, neither making motions of leaving the dimly lit private spot.

“So how far away do you live?” he asked.

“About two miles.”

“That way.” He pointed in the direction she'd once pointed for him.

“Yeah, that way.”

He moved to stand in front of her, planting his feet wide, with both hands in the pockets of his windbreaker. “I could walk you,” he offered.

“It'd be a long walk back home for you.”

“I don't care. It's a nice night.”

“You sure?”

He shrugged and grinned. “Good for the quads.”

Erin came whizzing around the end of the lockers.

“There you are, Chelsea! What's holding you . . . oh!”

“I was just talking to Kent.”

“Hi, Kent.”

“Hi, Erin.”

“Well, are you coming, or what, Chelsea?”

“No, you go on ahead. Kent's going to walk me home.”

Erin's expression, dimmed by a sudden tinge of jealousy, lost its vivacity. Her mouth squared. “You don't want to go to McDonald's with us?”

“Next time, okay?”

Erin continued looking sickly over her friend's good fortune. When time began dragging with no one speaking, she said, “Well . . . okay, then, but . . . well, call me tomorrow, okay, Chels?”

“For sure.”

“ 'Kay, then, bye.”

“Bye,” Chelsea and Kent said in unison.

When her footsteps faded, Chelsea said, “She likes you.”

Kent said, “She's okay, but she's not exactly what I'd call my style.”

They turned and began walking with the leisurely pace of two on the brink of discoveries with all the time in the world to make them.

“Oh? And what is?”

“I'm not sure yet. When I decide, I'll let you know.”

The empty building created an intimacy, surrounding them with its uncustomary quiet and the whispering sounds of their own movement down its corridors. He opened the heavy front door and let her pass before him into the autumn night. Outside some cars were still leaving the parking lot and someone honked at them and waved out an open
window. The lights were off above the football field, but those in the front lot created intermittent splotches along the edge of the school grounds. As they crossed the street, the moon, at half-phase, spread creamy light over the world, transforming the sidewalks to pale ribbons and putting thick shadows beneath the trees in the residential areas through which they passed. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. They moved unhurriedly through the dappled night, a young couple exploring their newfound friendship that hinted of growing into something more.

“Do you miss Texas?” she asked.

“I miss my friends, especially my best friend, Gray Beaudry.”

“Gray Beaudry. Southerners have romantic names, don't they?”

“Gray Richard Beaudry. I called him ‘Rich,' and it was our own little joke, because he was. His mother's family was named Gray and she came from oil money somehow. You should have seen their house. Swimming pool, guest cabanas. . . the works.”

“So do you want to be rich someday?”

“I don't know. It wouldn't be bad. Do you?”

“Not really. I'd rather be happy.”

“Well, yeah, who wouldn't? I mean, what good's money if you're miserable?”

They talked about their own parents' relative richness and happiness. Kent said that achieving had always made his mother happy and she'd worked really hard and their new house was a major achievement and source of pride for her. Chelsea said that was probably true at her house, too, and she pretty much got whatever she wanted so she guessed her mom and dad were probably pretty well off. She'd always known they were happy together, too. Kent said he'd
always thought it was odd that his mother was perfectly happy even though she'd never been married. Chelsea said wasn't it funny how different people were, 'cause she didn't think her mom and dad would be happy any other way but married.

Abruptly Kent changed the subject. “So what's this I hear about how Pizza got his nickname?”

“He told you?”

“Not him. Somebody else did. He's still scared to admit it.”

“But it's true and everybody knows it. On the last day of school two years ago, he called up Domino's Pizza and used my dad's name and had seven large pizzas delivered to our house.”

“And your dad paid for them?”

“What else could he do?”

“Man, that's hard to believe.” They were both laughing. “Takes a pretty even-tempered guy to do a thing like that. Didn't he even try to find out who did it?”

“Oh, he suspected right away. Roland had been caught driving on people's boulevards and had done detention time at the end of the school year. My dad was pretty sure it was him. So last school year, every time we'd have pizza for school lunch, my dad would go up to his table—you know how he does—and stand behind him and ask, ‘How's the pizza today, Roland?' And the weirdest thing happened. Roland started to like my dad so much that this summer he got a job working for the school district, mowing lawns and doing maintenance. My dad helped him get it.”

They walked in silence for a while before Kent said, “Can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“I envy you your dad. I think I sounded like I had a chip on my shoulder that day you asked me about mine, but since
then I've seen how Mr. Gard. . . I mean, how your dad comes up to you in the lunchroom and says hi, and you stop by his office now and then, and he pretty much likes the kids—you can tell. I think he's all right.”

“Thanks,” she replied, pleased. “I think so, too.”

They reached a corner and she said, “This is my street. Fourth house on the left.”

Their footsteps slowed. He hooked his thumbs into the back pockets of his jeans so his arm curved behind hers. Sometimes they let their elbows brush. They watched their feet move in slow motion down the edge of the street, beneath tree shadows that appeared blue upon the blacktop.

When they were almost at her driveway he asked, “So, are you going with anybody or anything?”

“No.”

He glanced at her secretly, then away, and said, “Good.”

“What about you? Any girl back in Texas you're writing to?”

“No,” he said. “Nobody.”

“Good,” she repeated, feeling especially lucky.

They turned and walked up the driveway. The closed garage doors cut off access through the family room, so she led him along the sidewalk to the front door, where she paused at the bottom of two steps leading up to a concrete stoop. Turning, she looked up at Kent. “Thanks for walking me home. Sorry you've got to walk so far back to your house.”

“No problem.” He stood with his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker and caught the sole of one shoe on the edge of the step behind her, unconsciously hemming her in. “Sorry I didn't have a car to drive you. My mom's going to get one for me, but she hasn't had time since we moved.”

“It's okay. I enjoyed walking.” She gazed at the sky and gave a protracted shrug. “It's a beautiful night, isn't it?”

He looked up, too. “Yeah, it sure is.”

Their gazes returned to earth and to each other. His foot dropped off the step.

“Well . . .” she said with a quirk of the head that said,
I'd better go in.

They stood transfixed by the idea of a kiss, trapped in that splendid moment of anticipation whereby nights are memorialized in girls' diaries forever.

He shifted, testing the moment, bending toward her in the slight, questioning way of a boy who leaves the choice up to the girl. She waited with her face lifted. He leaned down and kissed her, keeping his hands in his pockets, taking nothing for granted. His lips were soft, innocent, and closed. So were hers.

When he straightened they both smiled, and he said quietly, “See you.”

“Yeah . . . see you.”

He walked backward several steps before turning to head away.

I
T
was a rare Saturday morning when Tom stayed home. Community activities kept the school building open to the public, and when it was, he felt his place was there. People put the building to all kinds of uses: senior citizens' pancake breakfasts in the cafeteria, open swimming in the pool, dance-line practice in the gym, and everything from garden clubs to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings in the classrooms.

The Saturday after the first football game was no exception. Tom got ready to leave the house shortly after 8:30
A
.
M
.

“What are you doing today?” he asked Claire as he rinsed out his coffee cup. They had been treating their relationship as a fragile and precious thing since the night of their disagreement, being especially kind and appreciative to one another.

“Grocery shopping, housecleaning, then class preparation. When you get home, will you take a look at that sprayer on the sink and see if you can get it to work?”

“Sure.” He kissed her in passing. “See you later.”

She stopped him for a better kiss, and they parted lingeringly, smiling.

“See you,” she whispered.

“As soon as I can get home.”

There were smiles with ulterior meanings. They exchanged one that promised things sexual later on.

He spent the morning in his office, appreciating the quiet, studying the school's budget and trying to find room in it for a Russian language class, which would be taught by interactive television through a cable network with four other Minnesota school districts.

Shortly before noon Robby came in, dressed in sweats and dirty high-topped tennies.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hi,” Tom said, dropping his pencil, flexing backward in his chair. “Been working out in the weight room?”

“Yeah, but now my car won't start. I think the battery's dead.”

“Well, I'm ready to go home, too.” Tom scraped his papers together and squared them into a pile. “Let's go out and take a look at it.”

It was nearly noon, the activities in the building largely over. Tom locked the glass doors to the outer office, detoured through the cafeteria and found it quiet, glanced down the first-floor halls and found them quiet, too. Somewhere in the building the janitors were working; he could hear Cecil's radio playing softly in the west wing. The front doors were propped open again.

Outside, the September day was perfect, the sky a pale blue. The maple trees beside the front sidewalk and the massive elms in the yards of the neighborhood houses were still a deep, rich green. In a driveway across the road a man was washing a red car. The school grounds lay uncustomarily
quiet. At times like this Tom felt a peculiar emptiness: this place could feel so forlorn without the hubbub of activity it was made for. He always wanted to hurry home when he found the parking lot empty.

Tom and Robby got into Tom's car at the reserved section near the front door and drove around to the area designated for student parking. The Nova sat all by itself in the huge lot, its oxidized body looking as dull as an old galvanized pail. “Did it do anything when you tried to start it?”

“Naw. Wouldn't even turn over.”

“Might as well get out the jumper cables then.”

Tom pulled up nose to nose with the Nova, jerked the hood release, and found his jumper cables in the trunk. While he was attaching them to the batteries, Robby came and leaned on the fender beside him.

“I suppose I might as well tell you,” Robby said, “ 'cause you'll find out anyway. The coach reamed me out last night.”

“Oh yeah?” Tom kept his face averted.

“It's about Arens. He thinks I've got a burr on my butt about him.”

Tom glanced back over his shoulder. “Do you?”

“I don't know.” Robby shrugged and looked sullen.

Tom pulled his head from beneath the hood, brushing his hands against one another. “Talk to me. I'm not going to ream you out. Just talk to me.”

“Well, hell, Dad, Jeff got sidelined!”

Tom could see Robby was having great trouble puzzling out how to handle the situation; this was not the time to preach.

“So how's Jeff taking it?”

“I don't know. He didn't say much.”

Tom paused a beat. “So did you say it for him?”

“Not really. But I've been playing ball with Jeff since we were in third grade!” Robby sounded slightly petulant as he swung around and propped his backside against the fender. Tom studied his shoulders for a minute, wiped his hands on his hanky, then joined him. Side by side, with their arms crossed, they rested against the warm steel fender and fixed their eyes on the man washing his car clear across the parking lot and road. The noon sun warmed their shoulders and the backs of their heads. The wide expanse of gravel-strewn blacktop created the feeling that they were the only two people on an island.

Tom said, “You forget, I was at the game last night. I think I know what the coach was upset about. And by the way, what goes on between you and him in the locker room is strictly private. I don't ask, nor does he tell me, how he chooses to coach you.”

Robby glanced over, but made no reply.

Far off at the fire station a noon whistle blew. Above the distant trees north of the parking lot a flock of blackbirds lifted, made black confetti against the sky, then disappeared once more into the foliage.

“Life changes,” Tom said ruminatively. “You get it all lined up just the way you like it and then something beyond your control comes along and bumps you off center. How nice it would be if you could get everything just the way you want it and say, ‘Okay, now, stay.' But nothing stays the same. You grow up, make friends, lose friends, go to college, lose track of people, meet new ones, and sometimes you ask yourself why. But all I can tell you is that every single experience you go through like this changes you in some way. Every new person who comes into your life changes you. Every moral dilemma or emotional experience you come up
against changes you. It's your job to decide
how
. That's how character is developed.”

Robby kicked at some gravel with the toe of his tennis shoe, then looked off across the street. “So you're saying the team comes first, before Jeff.”

“I'm saying you've got to decide for yourself.”

Robby stared at the blackbirds, who flew up again, chattering, and made a shifting pattern of motion against the sky. Tom curled a hand over his son's shoulder and boosted himself off the fender. “Come on. Let's try to get this junk heap started.”

 

A short while later they arrived home in two cars. Tom parked in the garage and Robby at the end of the driveway. When he tried to restart the Nova, nothing happened. Tom stood listening to the sound of the starter grinding fruitlessly and mentally calculated the price of a new battery.

Robby slammed the Nova door and said, “Deader than a doornail.”

“I've been expecting it. At least it happened before winter.”

They entered the house together. The vacuum cleaner sprawled on the family room floor and the kitchen was a mess, as if putting away groceries was in interrupted progress.

Claire called from the porch, “We're out here eating soup! Bring a couple of bowls and spoons!”

Tom opened a cupboard door, Robby the silverware drawer, and they went through the family room toward the sunny side of the house.

On the screen porch Claire and Chelsea sat at the round patio table, where a stainless-steel kettle and a tube of crackers shared space with the day's mail. Chelsea was painting
her toenails, wearing an oversized white T-shirt sporting a chartreuse parrot. She finished one nail, ate a spoonful of soup, and began painting another. Claire, dressed in jeans, a chambray shirt, and a baseball cap, clinked her spoon into her bowl and said, “Help yourselves.”

Tom's hand drifted over her shoulder as he passed behind her chair. “What's new?”

“Mmm . . . not much. Your dad called. Nothing important, just said hi. What's new with you two?”

“The Nova probably needs a new battery. We had to jump-start it at school; now it won't start again.”

Robby lifted a cover off the soup kettle and peered inside. “What kind?”

“Broccoli-and-ham chowder.”

“With cheese?” he asked, his eyebrows rising.

“Of course.”

“All
right
, Mom! I'm starved.”

“So what else is new,” she remarked, as the guys filled their soup bowls and sat down. “Here, have some crackers.” Claire pushed a tube across the table.

Robby began breaking some into his soup and pushing them beneath the surface, keeping one eye on his sister. “What are you painting your toenails for? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of.”

“Yeah, well, what would you know, Big Neck?”

“Hey, you know how many hours of weight lifting it took to get my neck this big? And who sees your toenails anyway?”

She gave him a
look
that said,
Your stupidity is showing
.

“Does Kent Arens like painted toenails or what?”

“If he did, it's none of your business.”

“I hear he walked you home from the game last night.”

A spoonful of soup stalled halfway to Tom's mouth. A warning crimped his insides.

“That's none of your business either,” Chelsea shot back.

“Can't he drive a car yet, or what?”

“My goodness, that makes you sooo manly when you belittle others you're jealous of.” She blew down the length of her shin, trying to dry her toenails.

“That'll be the day I'm jealous of Kent Arens. Talks like a Confederate, and you can't understand half of what he says.”

“Well, I happen to like it, and yes, he walked me home last night. Anything else you want to know?”

“All right, you two, enough,” Tom said, forcing down the flutters in his stomach and the hot shot of fear whizzing through him. “I swear to God, the way you talk to each other, a person would think you were mortal enemies. And Robby, don't forget what we talked about at school.”

Chelsea said, “What did you talk about at school?”—her bearing suddenly alert with typical sibling nosiness.

Tom chided, “Chelsea.”

“Oh, all right.” They had rules about privacy, this family who bumped against each other twenty-four hours a day; Tom and Claire had laid them down early on. “But tell him he'd better not say anything to scare Kent Arens off. He's really nice and I like him a lot.”

Chelsea's words struck Tom full force.

His throat closed.

The chowder seemed to curdle in his stomach.

Good God, what had he done? Coward that he was, he'd withheld the truth, and now Chelsea probably had a crush on her own brother.

He had to get away, be alone, sort this through. He rose to carry his soup bowl into the kitchen.

Claire watched him go. “Tom, you hardly ate anything.”

“Sorry, honey, I'm not too hungry.”

In the kitchen he rinsed his bowl. He should have admitted his wrongdoing a week and a half ago, the day he'd first laid eyes on Kent Arens. All these lives—six lives—affected by this father-son relationship, and he'd stalled long enough from doing the honorable thing. Above the sound of the running water he called, “Listen, honey, I'm going to run up to Target and buy a battery for the Nova. I'll try to get to the kitchen faucet later, okay?”

“But shouldn't you take a look at the faucet first in case you need to pick up any parts?”

He went out to her, gave her a kiss on the hairline, worried sick about the mess he'd caused.

“The car's more important. Be back soon, okay?”

He drove to the Target Greatland store at the Woodbury Mall and called Monica Arens from a pay phone in the customer service area. She answered on the third ring.

“Hello, Monica. This is Tom Gardner.”

A surprised pause, then “Oh,” as if she'd looked up warily at someone else in the room. Probably Kent, Tom thought.

“I need to talk to you.”

She said nothing.

“Immediately.”

“I can't.”

“It's important.”

“I'm in the middle of something here and—”

“Monica, I don't give a damn what you're in the middle of! This can't be put off! Kent walked my daughter Chelsea home from the game last night!”

Again came a pause, then, “I see.” He sensed her fumbling for code words before she asked a question, pretending she
was speaking to someone at work. “Is the front door to the reception area open on Saturdays?”

“He's there in the room with you, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Will he believe you've been called to work?”

“Yes.”

“I'm at the Woodbury Mall. Can you come here?”

“Yes, I guess so, but I can't work very long. I'm still getting settled and there's so much in the house to do.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“How soon can you meet me there?”

“All right. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“There's a restaurant called Ciatti's that stands all by itself. I'm driving a red Taurus. I'll park on the northwest side of the building. Fifteen minutes.”

“Yes, okay, goodbye.”

He didn't remember buying the battery at Target, going through the checkout line, or writing a check. He was conscious primarily of a sharp ache across his shoulders, a bulky lump in his throat, and a headache across the base of his skull. It was Saturday. The shopping center was busy. He could run into any of his students anywhere. Had he done the right thing telling Monica to meet him in a parking lot? He checked the time: 1:35, so hopefully the lunch business would be tapering off and the restaurant parking lot wouldn't be too busy by the time she got there.

He drove to the meeting spot, parked, turned off the engine, and sat with the sun beating through the windshield, turning the car into an oven. The lot was about half full, but even as he arrived two cars left. He rolled the windows down, rested one elbow on the window ledge, pinched his
lower lip, and stared at the brick wall of the restaurant, his mind working.