Mean Season (18 page)

Time Passes

A
fter that, it's funny, but we started getting along better. Like clearing a field of rocks before you start to plant. The difference in the car, the easing in his silhouette, these remained. They were present the next morning, when I came downstairs—later than usual—and found Joshua and Beau Ray making a mess of the kitchen and calling it breakfast.

Joshua had brewed some tar-strong coffee I had to water down to swallow. He'd put Beau Ray in charge of making toast, and it was clear that Joshua didn't know about Beau Ray's fascination with the toaster. By the time I set foot in the kitchen, Beau Ray had toasted up more than half a loaf of Sunbeam. I said that would probably do, what with Momma not home yet from Judge Weintraub's.

Later, after I'd dressed for work, I found them in Beau Ray's room. Joshua was sitting on my brother's bed—which was made, actually made—looking at a family photo album from when we Pinecob Gitlins were all under the same roof.

Joshua looked up when I came in. He had this huge grin on his face. “Leanne, I swear to God, you are physical proof of the beneficial aspects of aging,” he said.

He held out the album, pointing at one snapshot in particular. There I was, in our backyard, body like a sausage, no curves at all until you got to the top of my head and started down again. I was eleven. The picture snapped Beau Ray and Max—both fifteen—and me and Sandy, all in the backyard at the end of a water-balloon fight that Sandy and I looked to have borne the brunt of.

“Sandy looks pretty much the same now,” Joshua said. “But you—it's like I can hardly see your face in this girl. Look at you, eyeing Max. You guys
have
known each other a long time.”

I nodded quickly and turned to Beau Ray, who was digging for something in the back of his closet.

“Beau Ray,” I said. “I've got to get ready for work. Have you taken your medicine?”

“He did. I saw him,” Joshua said. “I asked him to show me these. I hope that's okay.”

I looked back at Joshua right as Beau Ray emerged with a laugh and an armful of old high-school yearbooks.

“That's fine,” I told Joshua, then said that I'd see them after work.

 

Momma had asked me to start getting a list together for Beau Ray's birthday party at the end of July. Of course, there was Susan and the kids and Tommy. And Sandy. And Beau Ray's friends from physical therapy. And Max and the guys.

I wanted to give my brother Tommy the most notice, since sometimes he took construction jobs down at the very bottom of the Shenandoah Valley and would likely need a little more advance word to get off work. But everyone was keen to celebrate Beau Ray's thirtieth birthday.

We had talked to a number of doctors after Beau Ray's
accident. The first of them believed that my brother wouldn't make it through the night. And of course, he did. The second one said he'd probably not walk or speak again. The third one said that he'd most likely die from a seizure before he was thirty. And not only had that not happened, but the incidents of bad seizures had lessened in the passing years. We weren't in the clear by a long shot, but Beau Ray's thirtieth still seemed cause for celebration.

I paged Tommy during my lunch break and a few minutes later, he called me back.

“Anything wrong?” he asked.

I said no.

“You knock over any apple carts lately?” He laughed.

If I'd been closest to Vince, I'd surely been farthest from Tommy, both in age and disposition. “I was calling to remind you that Beau Ray's birthday party is coming up.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tommy said.

“He's going to be thirty,” I said. “Momma wanted to make sure it got on your calendar. Where are you?”

“I'm working a job out by Blacksburg,” he said.

“That Virginia?”

“Well, duh, Leanne. Look at a map.” That's the exact sort of comment that kept me far off from Tommy. “I'll try to make it, but I can't promise I'll be able to get the time off. Summer's the busy season,” he said.

“I know Beau Ray'd love to see you,” I told him.

“Well, sure,” Tommy said. “I said I'd try to make it.”

But to Tommy, it seemed like every season or month or week was too busy. Susan, of course, would come, with her kids. And Joshua would be there. The party would go on with or without Tommy, just like every other day did.

 

That night, Joshua asked if I might help him run lines for
Musket Fire.
I read the part of Elizabeth, who was the min
ister's daughter—the shrew character, if you were going to compare
Musket Fire
to
The Taming of the Shrew,
like the California crowd always did. I tried to make her sound passionate and conflicted but not at all lusty. But Joshua couldn't concentrate. He kept correcting his words and revising his accent, and finally gave up and threw the script down.

“You weren't in any of Beau Ray's yearbooks,” he said.

I nodded. That was on account of our age and grade differences.

“So can I see yours?” he asked me. I wanted to know why. “To get a better sense of you back then. You know, life history stuff.”

“Why?” I asked him again.

“Because I want to,” Joshua said.

I cut my eyes at him, like Momma did so often, trying to gauge whether it was truth.

“Plus it's good acting practice. I've got to keep myself working. You heard me—I sucked when we ran lines just now.”

I didn't think he'd sucked, but he
had
sounded a little more stilted than I'd expected.

“How is looking through my yearbooks practice?” I asked him.

“Show me and I'll tell you.”

So I relented and he followed me upstairs. We sat on Vince's bed and I opened up my senior-year annual.

“Choose someone,” Joshua said.

I asked who.

“Just anyone. Someone you knew.”

There were only seventy people in my graduating class, so I knew everyone, but Joshua sounded exasperated when I pointed this out. He poked a finger at a picture of a boy named Fletcher McCobb.

“Him,” he said. “Tell me about him.”

I stared into Fletcher McCobb's smile. I wondered where he was right then.

“Fletcher had an older brother who went out with Susan a few times,” I started to say.

“Tell me about Fletcher. Not his brother.”

I started again. I told him that the McCobbs had moved to Pinecob when I was in sixth grade, and that Fletcher had had a black eye on his first day of school. I told him how the McCobbs had more money than most families in town, and that Fletcher was always sporting one bruise or another. Even when I was little, I knew that his family was the sort that got shushed over.

I told Joshua how Fletcher used to wear a denim shirt with patches made to look like red handkerchief fabric, and how in high school he'd had a motorcycle and had once dropped it on the asphalt just outside the Wilsons' service station. I told him how Fletcher had joined the army straight out of high school, even though everyone figured he could have made more money working for his father. But Paulie had once done some work on the McCobb's house, painting or some such, and I remembered him saying that Fletcher had been smart to enlist.

“Is that enough? How would that even help?” I asked.

“It does,” Joshua said, and he got serious. He started saying how every person has a particular way about them and that his job—being an actor—meant trying to recreate real people or make up new ones, and how it's the particular details that jar a character loose from a script, making them into something that feels like life itself. Joshua told me how listening to stories about a perfect stranger, someone like Fletcher McCobb even, helped him remember all the different ways people grew up, so many-sided it could take your breath away. Sometimes, he said, after listening to someone describe a stranger—a friend or enemy or relative—he'd try to wear that person like a shirt, slipping into their posture or anger or laughter or manner of speaking. That's the part that was practice.

“I didn't know Fletcher too well,” I admitted. “I don't remember the way he spoke. He was kind of shy. Kind of flinchy.”

“That's okay,” Joshua said, standing up. “I'll show you with Lionel.”

“Why?”

“It's easy if I know the people in person.” Joshua grabbed a baseball cap from the closet and clamped it down over his hair and slung his thumbs through his belt loops. He inhaled deeply and seemed to inflate a little. In an instant, he'd captured Lionel's way of standing exactly.

“Hey there, little lady,” Joshua drawled, taking half a swagger forward. “What draws you out of yonder holler?”

“Stop,” I said. “That's scary. I mean, it's good. It's perfect.”

Joshua looked pleased. He took off the hat and stooped a little. He shuffled a few feet, then turned to me and pointed. “Do I know you?” he asked, all cantankerous now.

“The guy at the AA meeting,” I said.

“Homer,” Joshua said. Now he stood up straight. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and ran a hand through his hair. It was clear he was nervous—or acting nervous. “So, Leanne,” he said.

I shrugged. “I don't know,” I said.

He picked up Vince's stapler, then set it down, then looked around the room.

“I still don't know. Someone nervous?”

“Max!” Joshua said, like it should have been obvious.

“But you made him look all fidgety.”

“He is,” Joshua said.

“No, he's not,” I told him. “I don't see that at all.”

“Oh, right. Max is perfect,” Joshua said, back inside his own voice. He came over to Vince's bed and dropped on his stomach beside me. “So show me your skeletons.”

Joshua pointed to everyone in my high school class, and even some of my teachers, and for each one, made me tell a
story or admit a crush or grudge or say what had become of the person.

“Him?” Joshua said, pointing at a picture of Butch McAfee, whom I'd admitted was my junior-year prom date.

“It's not his best picture,” I explained.

“I hope not.” He glanced over at me. “You could do better.”

“Butch was nice. He sent me love poems.”

“Butch wanted to get into your pants,” Joshua said. I kicked him. “What? He was sixteen! That's what sixteen-year-old guys want. Trust me. I was one.”

I frowned.

“It doesn't mean that he didn't mean what he wrote. Just that there was a motive.”

“They were really bad poems,” I admitted.

“Leanne,” Joshua said. “You make me want to get a van, Leanne.”

“Stop it,” I told him, but he only gained steam.

“For you I'm working on my tan, Leanne.”

“Go ahead then,” I said. “I'm not listening.”

“I'm making a romantic plan. I must insist on being your man. You know I am your favorite fan, Leanne.” Joshua laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes.

“They weren't
that
bad,” I said, soon as I managed to stop laughing, too.

That was Joshua's fortieth day.

 

The next time I went to work, I found myself watching Mr. Bellevue—as he answered his phone or commiserated with a courthouse secretary about the construction that required a detour onto Fountain Street. I made a list of things I hadn't noticed before. He always straightened his tie before correcting someone. He kept only felt-tip pens in the mug on his desk. When he asked you a question, he'd look at you the whole time you were answering.

I didn't know what such details told me. They surely didn't draw an entire person. Could a stranger see Mr. Bellevue's double-knotted laces and know that he was kind? Could you tell by his slightly shuffled walk that he was lonely? I wondered what Joshua Reed would make of the list. If I did the same for myself, what would that show?

I thought of Momma and how I might describe her. I thought of Tommy. I thought of Vince. I skimmed the list of Mr. Bellevue's details and realized that I couldn't make a like one for Vince. I'd lost the ability to describe him. When he was younger, before the accident, I could have done it by heart—the sound of his laugh, the way he'd toss a ball from one hand to the next. But now I wondered whether I would even recognize him, if I'd even recognize his voice, were he to step up to the counter and apply for a hunting permit.

 

“I know something you don't,” Joshua said. It was Tuesday, that next week. He winked at Beau Ray.

“He knows something you don't,” Beau Ray said.

“I doubt that,” I told them both. That Tuesday had been the first day of bass fishing season, and I was beat from dealing with license applications all day. “Momma home?”

“They're out back,” Joshua said. “You don't want to know what I know?”

“What?” I turned to him. “What do you know?”

“Maybe I won't tell you,” he said. “Beau Ray, should I tell her?”

“Tell her,” Beau Ray said. He clapped his hands together.

“I should tell her who stopped by?”

“Who stopped by?” I asked.

“So now you
want
to know?” Joshua asked. I saw him wink at Beau Ray.

“Smax,” Beau Ray said.

“Max stopped by?” I asked.

“I told you she'd want to know,” Joshua said.

“Why did he stop by?” I asked. “Did he say?”

Joshua shrugged. “He asked if you were here, and when I said you weren't, he didn't seem terribly interested in keeping me company.”

“I was at the store,” Beau Ray said.

“What did he say?”

“Who? Beau Ray?” Joshua asked. “He said he was at the store.”

“You know who I mean,” I said.

“Oh, Max? What did Max say? Just to tell you he stopped by.” Then Joshua put on his best Josiah Whitcomb accent. “Leanne, I do believe you're sweet on that fella,” he said.