Mean Season (23 page)

“But you wanted her to go to Max.” I felt like I might cry. I remembered then what Joshua had said, back on the first night I met him. How Judy got people to do what she wanted.

“No, I wanted her away from Joshua,” Judy said. “I have seen what girls like that can do to a career. No one's going to mess with J.P.'s career on my watch.”

“But Max?” I said. “Of everyone. You pushed her back at him.”

“I'm sorry, Leanne. I guess I forgot about your feelings for him,” Judy said.

“You didn't forget,” I said. “You decided they weren't important.”

“Please. You know that's not true,” Judy said.

But I didn't know it. I thought about all the birthday cards she'd sent over the years. Every stray typo she'd found in the newsletters. She'd always been so good at details.

“How could you do that to me?” I asked her.

Judy took a deep breath. “It's not about you,” she said. “It's not personal, it's priorities. My priority is J.P. and J.P.'s career. It always has been.”

 

It's a gift, I guess, to catch sight of people as they actually are, and to recognize the moment when it's happening. I
knew, looking at her then, that this was the real Judy, not the person I'd so long wanted to be, and not some beast, either. Much as I hated hearing her say it, and likely I hated her as she said it, at least I finally knew. It's a lot harder to fight in the dark.

But this was still fuzzy to me, right when it happened. I didn't have the words to react and so instead, I left. I'd explain it to my family after the fact. They all thought it was about Max and the casting director anyhow.

I told Susan she'd have to pray for me as well as Joshua, and I hightailed it instead to Sandy's place, stalking out the back way, through the itchy high grasses in Brown's Field. Soon after she'd returned from the beach, Sandy had moved from her parents' house into a rental place of her own, a sweet little bungalow on Valley Road over at the west edge of Pinecob, where she didn't have to ask permission for her girlfriend to stay the night.

Sandy was working, but I knew where she kept the spare key, so I let myself in. In exchange for the safe haven, I cleaned her kitchen and bathroom. I knew she didn't have the time or the inclination, and also I'd always found that cleaning when your blood is up can be near to exhilarating. Especially when it's someone else's mess. My own mess, I didn't know how to start on that.

I knew my problem—I felt useless. I couldn't help or hinder Joshua's career, not living in Pinecob the way I did. And Joshua's career was what mattered to Judy. She'd said so. Sure, my years with the fan club gave me some knowledge, but truth be told, Judy could have gotten any number of willing volunteers to take it over at that point.

In an economics course I had taken at the extension campus, my professor talked about something called a “sunk cost.” When a business, say, is trying to figure out its next strategic move, it's supposed to ignore the time or money or resources it might have invested in its last move. You start from
where you are on that day and move forward. What's past is past, and you're not supposed to let history sway current or future decisions.

But my past felt like roots that bound me to people and places. It wasn't something I could easily extricate myself from, even if I'd been certain I wanted to. My past had made me who I was and advised me whom to trust, if not what to do. That's the way I looked at it. I was sunk into it. Not sunk away.

When I was done cleaning, I dropped onto Sandy's couch and flipped television channels a while. She got the same dull five as we did. No cable on Valley Road.

Later in the afternoon, I called home.

“Where are you?” Joshua asked. “Yesterday a crowd, and today no one.”

“Judy's gone?” I wanted to make sure.

“She went back to Harper's Ferry a while ago. Hey, you don't have Charlene's number, do you?”

I told him that I didn't. Her family wasn't from Pinecob— I didn't even know what town they called home—and I didn't know where she might be staying.

“Are you coming back soon?” Joshua asked.

“Why? You lonely?” I said.

“Well, yeah,” he said. And though I'd meant it to be a joke, his answer dug at my heart a little. I told him I'd head home shortly.

 

Joshua was out on the deck when I returned, two glasses of lemonade on the table. He handed me one.

“You've got this great, distinctive stomp, Leanne. I knew that had to be you from all the way on the far side of the field,” he said.

I sipped the lemonade and took the lounge chair beside him. He said that Momma had called to say that Susan and the kids left straight from church with Beau Ray, who was
going with them to Elkins for a few days' visit. Momma and the judge were spending the afternoon out at Antietam, over in Maryland, as Judge Weintraub was something of a Civil War buff. I wondered how the afternoon would unfold for them, seeing as how Momma's family was originally from Tennessee and still called it the Battle of Sharpsburg, not Antietam as they do in the north. But long and short of it, Sunday afternoon was just me and Joshua and the hot almost-August sun and a pitcher of lemonade.

Joshua wanted to talk about Charlene.

“You were there when she left. Did it sound like she was coming back?”

I said I didn't know. I said that Judy was the only one who might say for sure. “Did you ask her about it?” I asked.

Joshua shook his head. “I could tell what Judy thought of Charlene. But I thought for sure she'd be back. Hell, I was surprised she wasn't waiting when I got out of the shower.”

“I don't know what to tell you,” I said.

It was true. I didn't know how much to say about what I'd overheard. It seemed a precarious thing—if Joshua knew that Charlene was leaning toward Max, he might say good riddance. If he heard me speak ill of Judy, he might think I was making it up, jealous of any number of things. Luckily, at the core, Joshua was more interested in himself than he was in Charlene.

“Want to know what the hardest part is?” he asked me.

“Do I?”

“When people expect me to
be
these characters. People actually expect me to be Colin Ashcroft or Nate Cummings. I didn't even invent those characters. I just said some writer's dialogue. I didn't even
like
Colin Ashcroft.”

“You didn't like Colin Ashcroft?” I asked. “How could you not like Colin Ashcroft? He was perfect!”

“Please. He was a pussy,” Joshua said. He counted on his fingers as he spoke. “He was smart, sure. But he was way too
nice to all the old ladies. He always offered to work extra shifts—even when he'd been in surgery for, like, seventy-two hours. And he never got the girl.”

“He got the girl,” I said. “He had that thing with Miranda. And then he dated Chastity.”

“Yeah, but remember, he wanted Fern. But he never had the guts to go get her. I kept yelling at the writers. You know, let him ask her out.”

“But her father ran the committee that wanted to take away his fellowship,” I reminded him. I'd always found Colin's shyness around Fern endearing.

“So what? He was a prodigy, for God's sake! He should have asked for what he wanted. You've got to say what you want. But I can't tell you how many times I've been on a date with some girl and I'll say something like that and she'll get a look on her face like it's a personal affront. Like I've been misleading her. On our first date!”

I nodded. The problem in a town the size of Pinecob was the opposite. Everyone knew everyone else almost too well. There weren't enough surprises. And there was too much talk.

Max had said that I held things close, and maybe it was true. But that was a learned habit. Like Joshua with his acting, I'd practiced long and hard not to give much away. As the youngest Gitlin, I'd grown up hearing about my brothers and sister second-and third-hand. Good and bad, but gossip all the same, and that's how you got a label. And in a town the size of Pinecob, labels are hard to pull off. My brother Tommy was the wild one who could be trusted to pick fights. Susan was the cheerleader whose first pregnancy kicked her off the squad. After his fall, Beau Ray was “that poor Gitlin boy.”

“Or sometimes,” Joshua went on. “They only want to be with the movie star,” he said.

“That's not you?”

Joshua smiled at me, then looked out toward the stand of dead oaks at the far side of our house.

“You know what I like about you?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“That you've got only you. There's just Leanne. You ask for Leanne, and you get Leanne.”

“I don't follow,” I told him. But I figured as labels went, “just Leanne” was okay.

“I hate Rackett, and, you know, that I wish I weren't from that shithole. But that doesn't change the fact that, deep down and way back, I
am
from Rackett. I sprung from that shithole.”

“Okay,” I said. I wasn't sure where he was going.

“Most of the time, the celebrity gig is fine. There are a ton of perks. But part of me…you know, nobody knows you like the people who were there when your past was your present day. For me, that's knowing some drama geek named Josh Polichuk.”

“So bring back the drama geek,” I said. “You can't fairly expect people to know him if you refuse to talk about him.”

“
You
know him,” he said.

“From one geek to another.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he agreed, which wasn't exactly what I wanted him to say.

“I feel I've got to tell you something,” I said. “I think maybe Judy sent Charlene away.”

Joshua stood up then and walked to the edge of the deck, his back to me. I couldn't guess his expression and what he meant by standing there, looking like he might dive into the green spread of the backyard. Then he turned back around, his face in a sort of sad smile.

“I don't know why I didn't see that,” he said. “Guess I've been around your family too long. No secrets and all. Thanks for telling me.”

I shrugged.

He got a little more mad then. “But that's not fair! I'm stuck here!” He paused. “Max doesn't have Charlene's number, does he?”

“Max is gone, remember?”

 

That night, the phone rang, and I could gather from the way Bill Weintraub smiled as he handed me the headset that it was a call I'd want to take. I shushed everyone out of the kitchen for a little privacy.

“So how's New York?” I asked.

“Hot,” Max said. “Crowded. Dirty. Loud. But cool, too. It kind of smells.”

“So do you love it?”

“Not yet. It's different. Lots of people wearing black. Sasha says that Los Angeles is the total opposite of New York. But I was thinking that Pinecob was the total opposite of this place, so I don't rightly know what to expect, aside from palm trees. Sasha's already got me booked to meet a bunch of people.”

“It must be going well, then. I think Sasha has a crush on you.”

“I think you're jealous.”

“Not of him.” I asked Max if he knew yet when he'd be flying west.

“Wednesday, I think. I can't believe I'm actually going to get on a plane. I hope I can do it.”

“Of course you can do it,” I told him. “Will you be coming back through Pinecob first?”

“Yeah, and then I'll leave when Judy does. Hey, what do you think of Judy, anyhow? I never really asked you about her. I never figured she'd suddenly come to matter so much.”

“She's good at her job,” I said. I didn't think it was my place to tell him any different. I didn't want to jeopardize anything. “I don't really know her that well. I mostly know her on the phone, but I think in person, she's different.”

“She seems really nice.”

“I know,” I said. “She met… I think she liked Charlene,” I said.

“I don't want to talk about Charlene,” Max said. “I told you.”

“I know.”

“I was thinking how I want to kiss you again,” he said.

I blushed into the phone. “You do?”

“But for longer. Just, more.”

“Okay.”

“Just okay?” he asked.

“More than okay,” I said.

“Good. So I'll be back Wednesday some time. I'll call or stop by or something.”

I told him that I'd be waiting.

All I Didn't Know

I
hated waiting for Max to return. I wanted to see him again. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to get down to the business of him being my boyfriend, to make it an official thing. One kiss was great, but it was still just one kiss, the start but not the thing itself. There are plenty of guys out there I've kissed only once.

Monday night, I was trying to read, to get my mind off of him. And off of Beau Ray and the football he'd brought to Elkins with him, which Joshua still hadn't given me a straight answer about. Sitting on my bed, I could hear Joshua in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. Times like that, things felt intimate. As soon as I heard him, I put my book down and listened. Who'd have thought, even six months before, that I'd be sitting there, listening to Joshua Reed brush his teeth. He'd been with us more than two months at that point, but it still seemed something magical strange at times.
On the flip side, of course Joshua Reed brushed his teeth. He was Joshua Reed, movie star and all, but he was also just a guy practicing good dental hygiene.

I turned back to my book as soon as I heard him twist off the taps, so as not to seem too weird and stalky. He stuck his head in my bedroom doorway.

“I'm going to bed,” he said. “I'll see you in the morning.”

“Sleep well,” I said, and he nodded. I looked at my window and thought about Max again. Then I heard a noise from Joshua's room, a panicked, gasping sort of chirrup.

“Leanne!” I heard him say.

I scrambled out of bed and ran across the hall. He was standing stiff up against the doorjamb, staring at the window. I probably gasped, too, seeing a person there. A face with a beard. A man's face that, for a moment, I thought looked familiar. But it was a second before I could react.

“We're posted no trespassing!” Joshua yelled. He pointed his finger at the bearded man, but me, I reached out my hand. The man looked at it, but when I took a step forward, he seemed to startle and hustled down the ladder he'd been standing on.

“That's right. Get lost!” Joshua said. “Goddamn invasion of privacy. Jesus! I could have been doing anything!”

“Wait!” I said, and turned and ran from the room, down the stairs, and back toward the dining room and the backyard. But the man was down the ladder by the time I reached the sliding doors. He'd disappeared into the trees by the time I got them open.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, don't go!” I couldn't see anyone, and didn't know if he could hear me. “Was that you? Will you come back?” I listened for any sound from the woods, but heard only crickets and wind. “Vince?” I called out.

I sat on the deck steps and stared into the trees until a padding of feet told me Joshua had followed me downstairs. He sat next to me and looked out across the yard.

“You don't think that was Vince?” he asked.

“I did. At first,” I said. “But I'm not sure. You've seen pictures of him. What do you think?”

“I don't know. I figured it was some freak fan or something. Did you recognize him? For sure?”

I shook my head. The truth was, I hadn't. Something about the bearded man felt familiar, but he could have been a fan who vaguely resembled Vince. Or a rogue tabloid stringer. Or maybe I'd seen him at one of Joshua's AA meetings. Or in the Winn-Dixie.

“Has Vince ever done that before? Shown up at the house?”

I shook my head. “No. I don't know. No one's been in his room for ages.”

“Have you heard from him recently?”

“Not for years.”

“We should ask Judy if she's gotten any weird fan mail in the past month or so.”

“I suppose so.”

“If it was Vince, is he unstable? Would he be dangerous?” Joshua asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “It probably wasn't him.”

“I wonder if he had anything to do with that creepy Nicolette chick who showed up here,” Joshua said.

“I doubt it,” I told him. That was the one thing I was certain of.

 

“Why is our ladder up against Vince's room?” Momma asked at breakfast. I could see Joshua watching me.

“I was cleaning that window,” I told her. “I forgot to put it away.”

“Do it today, would you?” Momma said. “It could fall. Someone could get hurt.”

I told her I would.

Later, at work, Mr. Bellevue mentioned that a man had stopped by and asked for me.

“What man?”

“Some guy. About your age, maybe. He didn't leave his name.”

I asked what the guy had looked like. “Did he have a beard?”

“Nah. No beard. But your color hair. Sort of wiry.” That might describe Vince, as well as about a million other people. Mr. Bellevue motioned with one of his felt-tip pens. “Maybe you're getting your own fan club.”

I smiled at him. In the light of morning, the bearded man seemed most likely another fan with boundary issues, even if he had looked a little like my missing brother.

Of course, I wanted to believe it had been Vince. I wanted him to come back. I wanted all of my family to come back. Joshua was right, everyone had left Pinecob. Even Beau Ray did—his fall had taken a huge part of him away from us. Everyone had left but me and Momma, and she wasn't even around too often in those days. It got me to thinking. Maybe the door was still open, if I could figure out where I wanted to go once I walked out of it.

 

At home that evening, I thought, I have to ask. I couldn't just leave it to wondering.

“When was the last time you heard from Vince?” I asked.

Momma was piecing squares for a new quilt, sitting in the living room beside Judge Weintraub. She looked up at me, then over at the judge, like she was trying to tell me not to ask such a thing in front of him.

“He's practically family,” I said. I rocked back and forth in Dad's old easy chair.

“Why, thank you, Leanne,” the judge said. But he stood all the same. “I think I left something in the bedroom,” he said and climbed the stairs. Momma turned back to her quilting.

“Well?” I asked her.

“Why?”

“What do you mean why?” I asked. “Have you heard from him recently? Have you seen him?”

“Leanne, now you listen to me. You got to get over thinking Vince is coming back,” Momma said. “You got to let him go.”

I asked Momma how she could sound so certain, like she wasn't just guessing. Momma put aside her squares.

“Heavens when was it…? Maybe seven years ago now, September, we got a phone call here at the house. From the police. You were at school.”

“The police? You never told me this,” I said.

“I'm telling you now. I meant to for years, and then…I guess it became something you didn't need to know. Leanne, I know how you were about him.”

“You were the same way,” I reminded her.

“That's how come I knew.”

“What did they say? The phone call?” I tried to think back seven years. I'd been seventeen, maybe eighteen. Around September, I'd been starting my applications for college.

Momma looked like she had to gather her strength. “The policeman who called, he said they'd found a body in some building that was getting torn down, somewhere in Kansas. They didn't have much to go on for ID, because he'd been dead some time, but they found a ring on the body. You remember Vince's class ring?”

I felt a chill pass through me, like something dead had flown through the room. I wondered if it was Vince, or maybe my father, trying to act the shield.

“It was his? I mean, did they know for sure it was his?”

Momma nodded.

“But did they know for sure it was Vince?”

Momma shrugged. “They didn't—they don't—know that it
wasn't.
And Vince loved that ring of his.”

“But you don't know. It could have been someone else,” I said.

“Leanne,” Momma said, strong enough that I had to look at her. “I can't do this. It was hard enough back then. I had to make a choice.”

I thought back to that September. It was the beginning of the period Momma referred to as her unraveleds, the beginning of those long, mean seasons of time. I wished she had told me about the phone call. I'd been so frustrated—quietly, but still frustrated as heck—by her weakness back then, a weakness that sucked every bit of light from our house. But here she'd been trying to keep me strong, trying to keep at least one of us strong.

“I know your daddy never liked secrets,” Momma said. “But I didn't know what else to do. I was afraid you'd do something crazy. Maybe run off to Kansas. They said he'd been shot through the head. Fast, at least. I tell myself that.”

Part of me nearly broke in two right then, but another part of me now clung to the man in the window. Why couldn't it have been Vince?

“But what if it wasn't him? Maybe Vince had sold that ring, did you think about that? Or maybe it got stolen. Maybe he's still alive,” I said.

“I hoped. But the police said it was a good match, age and hair color. I don't know, Leanne. Him being alive, that would be a gift from above, but God's been down on us Gitlins for a while now, don't you think?” Momma asked. “I couldn't hold on to that. I can't. I still can't.” Momma reached over and patted my hand. “I should have told you sooner.”

“You should have,” I said.

Momma looked far off. “You want to protect your children,” she said. “Even when they're not children no longer, you still think you can, maybe, make things not hurt so bad.”

“I know,” I said.

“I couldn't protect my youngest boy,” Momma said. “That
near to killed me, I'll tell you. And there you were, my baby. How could I talk about this thing? But Bill says I got to remember how old you are, even if I still see a six-year-old when I look at you.”

“You still see a six-year-old?”

“Crying your eyes out when your tadpoles died, of course I do. You feel things real strong, Leanne, even if you pretend you don't. You're my girl that way.”

I just nodded.

“You know, I really appreciate how you've been getting on with Bill. Especially with what your sister says.”

“Susan doesn't like him?” I asked.

“He's not a churchgoer. Well, to her church,” Momma said. “She keeps calling it a character flaw. Like she's so perfect.”

“Susan doesn't live here,” I said.

Momma smiled. “You going to be okay?” she asked.

I shrugged. I honestly didn't know.