Josie and Jack (18 page)

Jack continued to stir his coffee. “Only during the winter,” I went on. “Jack and I went when we were younger.”

“Did you.” Becka sounded uninterested.

“We went at night. It was closed. We had to sneak in.”

“That’s you all over.” She glanced at Jack. “Never do things the easy way.”

“I hate that crap, though,” he said, stretching an arm across her shoulders. “Tours and guides and cameras and gift shops.”

“Frank Lloyd Wright desk sets and official Fallingwater coffee cups,” I added.

Becka leaned her head against Jack again and closed her eyes. He said, “Human beings suck the life out of everything that’s beautiful. The only way to keep something pure is to keep it to yourself.”

“On a private island?” I said.

Becka, close to sleep, made a small whimpering noise. One of Jack’s arms went around her, his hand burying itself again in her hair. His eyes were on me as she snuggled against him. “In uncharted waters.”

And I remembered: Josie fourteen, Jack sixteen. Pulling the truck off the road into a clearing and hiking to the house in the darkness, afraid to use flashlights or even to get too close. The house itself was dark. A lone floodlight shone in the maintenance parking lot, where the park ranger’s truck sat by itself, quiet and deserted. The house and the river that ran beneath its cantilevered platforms seemed like a single living organism crouched there in the silence. Jack and I crept around the grounds like thieves, and in whispers he pointed out the things that he found beautiful about the house: the wide terrace, with its slick, polished flagstones; the dark windows above the stucco walls, silver in the moonlight; the many-paned windows that formed a corner of the room inside, a corner that disappeared when the windows were open because by a miracle of physics it bore no weight. He kissed me by the lower falls. Then we heard a noise and we thought it was the ranger so we ran. Our boots crunching on the snow-covered twigs made so much noise that even if the ranger hadn’t heard us before, he would have then, and we didn’t stop running until we had our truck in sight. And I remember, when we got home, the way the attic smelled, and the silence that was the dead of winter, and the watery shadows that the icicles hanging from the eaves outside cast through the window.

The waitress dropped Becka’s plate on the table and walked away without a word. Becka opened her eyes and stared at the waffle, which was covered in a drift of whipped cream and spotted with preserved strawberries gone shapeless with syrup. Dreamily, she picked up a fork, stabbed one of the globs of fruit, and put it in her mouth.

“If that’s true,” she said as she chewed, “you two are the purest people I ever met, ’cause you keep everything to yourselves.”

“Everybody’s got a secret or two,” Jack said.

“Or three, or four.” Becka opened her eyes wide. “I bet I can list everything I know about the two of you in under a minute.”

“What are we betting?” Jack asked.

“Whatever you want,” she answered.

He looked at his watch. “All right.”

“Your father’s smart, like you. But mean. I think maybe your mother is dead, but I can’t tell because your story keeps changing. You have bad dreams and you don’t like deep water or tight spaces. You won’t come watch me dance but you don’t ever ask me about it, or get jealous like some guys do. You drink too much and you drive too fast, and you’re vain as hell.” She looked at me. “And about two weeks ago, I found out you had a little sister. And the way you spend money, you must have come from it. And that’s it. I don’t even know how old you are, exactly.”

“Thirty seconds,” Jack said.

“Not bad,” I said, although I hadn’t known about the deep water or the tight spaces.

“Now, you I don’t know anything about.” She was still looking at me. “Except that you look just like Jacky here, so I imagine he’s telling the truth when he says you’re brother and sister.”

“What the hell,” Jack said. “Why would I lie about that?”

“I don’t know.” She picked up her fork, stabbed the waffle through the middle, and began sawing at it with her knife. She didn’t look at either of us. “Forget it.”

“He’s nineteen,” I offered.

She shrugged.

“Okay,” Jack said. “What do you want to know?”

“Nothing.” She paused with her waffle-laden fork halfway to her mouth. A strawberry fell off and hit the table with an audible plop. “But if you’re not going to tell me about things, then don’t sit here talking about them like I’m not even here. It’s not polite.” She shook her head and shoveled the food into her mouth. “I get so tired of all your goddamned special little secrets.”

She dropped her fork and pushed back her plate. She stood up, took a twenty out of her pocket, and dropped it on the table.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” she said and left.

Jack and I followed her.

When we got back to Becka’s house, she went straight into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. It had started to rain and the inside of the house was damp. My eyes were gritty with exhaustion.

Jack drew me a bath and sat on the toilet while I soaked. I had a feeling this was something Becka would not have approved of, had she known; but she was asleep in the next room, oblivious, and it was good to soak in the warm water and pass quiet words with Jack. Afterward he brushed his teeth in the bathroom; I crept into Becka’s room and stood over her, wrapped in a pink towel. She hadn’t taken off her makeup before going to bed and it had smeared. I stared down at her blurred features and had trouble remembering what she really looked like.

Becka’s friend Michael knocked on the door at about two in the afternoon. Becka was still in bed and Jack was making coffee in the kitchen, so I answered the door.

He was older than I had expected; he had crow’s-feet around his hazel eyes, and I wondered again how old Becka was. He was also easily the tallest person I’d ever met. He was wearing a pair of camouflage pants cut off at the knees and a sleeveless undershirt, and the parts of his arms and legs that I could see were long and spidery and covered with tattoos. His black hair was jagged and rough, as though he’d cut it himself.

He looked at me and smiled a small, private smile.

“Jack’s sister.” His voice was smooth and sharp, like a knife blade.

“Michael,” I said and let him in.

“Where’s Becka?”

“Still in bed,” Jack called from the kitchen. “You want coffee?”

Michael shook his head. “Go tell her to move her West Virginia butt. The day’s wasting.”

“Hang on,” Jack said. A moment later he emerged from the kitchen and gave me a cup of coffee. “Be your charming self while I go see what’s up with Beck, will you?”

When he was gone, Michael smiled the private smile again. “Are you charming?”

“Not yet.” I was too sleepy to be self-conscious. “Try me again in a few hours. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” he said.

Standing at the sink, I could hear Jack and Becka talking in low voices in the bedroom. I wondered what was going on.

When I came out of the bathroom, combing my hair with my fingers, Michael was sitting on the couch where I’d slept the night before. He hadn’t even bothered to push aside the sheet I’d used to protect myself from the rough upholstery. He was reading a paperback. He’d wrapped the front cover around the back of the book and I couldn’t see the title.

There was nowhere else to sit so I sat down next to him. He didn’t acknowledge me. He read his book. I examined my fingernails. We sat in silence.

After a few minutes, Jack came out of the bedroom, looking exasperated. “Bad news,” he said.

Michael closed the paperback and stuck it in his pocket. “Becka’s bailing out on us.”

Jack nodded.

“Oh, no,” I said, without much conviction.

“She’s tired. I think the two of us are going to hang out here. But”—and Jack looked at me, his eyes grimly apologetic—“she says you two should go without us.”

“Whatever.” Michael didn’t sound as if he cared much either way.

I went cold. “Jack—”

“Go, Josie,” he said, and it was a command. “There’s no reason for you to sit around here all day.”

The closed bedroom door was mocking us. I could imagine Becka lying smugly in bed behind it, proud at having engineered an entire day without me around. At that moment, I hated her.

“Fine,” I said.

Michael drove an old Jeep with a deep dent on the front fender. The Jeep was open to the air, and the drive down Twenty-sixth Street to Presque Isle was too loud for conversation. Which was just as well, because I was furious. This girl, this
ordinary
girl, had dismissed me as easily as if I were some extraneous little tagalong sister. Worse, Jack had let her do it. I brooded so deeply over the slight that when the trip was over and Michael turned off the engine, I was surprised.

He had pulled off of a narrow paved road, behind three or four other cars. The Jeep was parked on a stretch of dirt between the road and a dense forest; across the road there were trees, too, but they were sparser. In the spaces between them, I could see a thin blue line that was the water. As we sat in the car, a couple rode by on bicycles.

“Very pretty,” I said.

“If you think she planned this, you’re right,” Michael said. “She told me about it yesterday.”

“Somehow that doesn’t improve my mood.”

“Not saying it should. But you can’t blame her. There she was, living dumb and happy with your brother, nice enough guy, fun to look at and treats her good, mostly, and then along comes his baby sister and boom, she’s like—Mom, with sixteen-year-old kids hanging around, and that guy she’s so into doesn’t hardly give her the time of day anymore. Of course she’s pissy about it.”

I stared at him. “I’m seventeen. Not that it’s any of your business. And how old do you think Jack is, anyway?”

“Oh, I’m not saying I don’t have my opinions about your brother,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of those. All I’m saying is that if Becka’s not happy with the way things are, well, it’s her house, and you’ve got to make do with that if you want to hang around. Which I guess you do.”

I gave him my iciest look and said, “Exactly what
opinions
do you have about my brother?”

Michael shrugged. “I never trust anybody with that much charm.” He pulled a pair of sunglasses from above the sun visor and put them on. “Come on. I didn’t slog all the way out here to sit in the car.”

I followed him, carrying the rubber sandals that Becka had bought me. The sand was hot and the water, once we got there, was clear and inviting.

“I thought this was a lake,” I said. “Why are there waves?”

“It’s a pretty big fucking lake.” Michael took off his shirt and draped it over a rock. “Are you wearing a suit under that?” He gestured toward my shorts and T-shirt.

“Don’t have a suit.”

“Well, it’s a hot day. You’ll dry. Can you swim?”

“Sure.”

He pointed at the lake. There was a cluster of rocks jutting out of the water about fifty feet from shore. “Let’s go out there and come back.”

“Why?”

“Give us something to do.”

I stared at the rocks, gauging the distance and the calm water. “Want to race?”

Michael was wading into the lake. The water was already above his knees. “We’re doing this to kill time,” he said over his shoulder to me. “Why rush?”

Out in the water, which was warmer than I expected, he kept to his word, stroking slowly and lazily and sometimes turning over onto his back so that he could look at me.

“Watch out for the sharks,” he called to me at one point.

“Funny,” I called back.

But the truth was, as my arms and legs stretched in the warm, glassy water, my mood was lifting. I didn’t look at Michael as I swam the last few strokes to the rock. The side was too slippery and steep to climb up, so he was treading water a few feet away, his wild hair slicked down against his skull.

“Better?” he said.

“What do you care?”

Michael took a mouthful of water and spit it out. “Don’t get pissed off at me. I’m just the babysitter.” Then he dove underwater and headed back to shore. He stopped to wait for me in the shallows.

“No fair,” I said. “You didn’t give me a chance to rest.”

“Nope.” He flopped down on the hot sand.

I flopped next to him. “So what did Becka say when she asked you to do this?”

“Exact words?” He put on Becka’s accent: “‘Mikey, sweetie, Jack’s weird little sister is visiting and I need to get her out of my hair for a day or so. You think you can take her out, show her a good time?’”

I stared at my sand-covered feet. “She called me weird?”

“She might have called you a freak. I can’t remember exactly. Don’t bother trying to brush that off yet. Let it dry.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Well, the way you’ve been doing things clearly isn’t working,” he said. “And I know Becka pretty well. Better for you to know where you stand.”

I had nothing to say to that. I looked at his tattoos. A huge Chinese dragon, snarling and intricate, covered his left leg; the right had his name, Michael, written down the length of it in elaborate gothic script. One of his arms was completely covered with black and red ink, and the other had a bracelet of barbed wire drawn around his biceps. They were a little disturbing—I wasn’t quite sure why—but beautiful.

“Did you do your tattoos yourself?” I asked him.

“Nope. The ones on my legs I had done in high school. The others a guy I work with does for me.”

“Why don’t you do them yourself?”

“Zenon’s a better artist than I am.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Get one and find out.”

“Pass.”

“I’ll do it for you,” he offered. “For free. It’s not often I get to work on teenaged-girl flesh.”

I turned and stared at the waves, my cheeks burning. I was suddenly conscious of the way my wet clothes were clinging to my body. “I think I’m going to go back in the water.”

I started to swim back out to the rocks, but I changed my mind when I was halfway there and turned around again. Michael was lying on the sandy beach, basking in the sun like a snake. He wasn’t looking at me.