Mean Season (5 page)

“Joshua's going to be our house guest for the summer,” Momma said. “Isn't that nice?”

Joshua looked a little uncomfortable. Beau Ray finally tore his eyes from the television set and glanced up at Joshua.

“Hey, man,” Joshua said.

Beau Ray's eyes went wide. “That's!” Beau Ray said. He pointed at Joshua Reed, then turned to me with an incredulous smile, mouth open, icing everywhere. “That's!” he said again.

I had to smile back. Anyone would have.

“Yes. It is,” I said. “Remember how I was telling you? And you didn't believe me.”

Beau Ray scrambled to his feet, his eyes locked on Joshua the whole time. Chocolate crumbs fell to the floor and got mashed into the carpet as Beau Ray rushed over and enveloped Joshua in a huge hug. Joshua looked at me like he could use some guidance.

“It's!” Beau Ray said, hugging him close.

“Now, now, dear,” Momma told my brother. “Of course you're excited but let the man alone!”

But Beau Ray was a lot beefier than Joshua, and he was holding on tight.

“It's!” Beau Ray said again, laughing a little. His laughter shook Joshua up and down.

“It's cool, man,” Joshua said, but I thought he looked sort of scared. His arms flapped a little—as much as they could pinned beneath the hug.

“Beau Ray, please let go of him. You've got the whole summer to hug him,” I said. I must have sounded serious because Beau Ray released Joshua, then came to my side. He poked me in the shoulder, like I hadn't seen Joshua yet or if I had, didn't realize the magnitude of amazement he warranted.

“Cool man,” Beau Ray said to me, poking me hard.

“Ouch. I know,” I said.

Joshua was catching his breath. He'd taken a couple steps away from Beau Ray and was wiping chocolate icing from his cheek.

“I'll get you a towel for that,” Momma said. “You got some on your shirt, too. I'll get the soap.”

“Really, don't bother,” Joshua said, but she was already halfway to the kitchen.

“Beau Ray,” I said. “Have you cleaned your room? Because I want to show Joshua your room, but I want to make sure it's clean first.”

“It's clean,” Beau Ray said, still staring, as if Joshua might disappear if he looked away.

“Really?” I asked.

Beau Ray cast his eyes to the floor. The playing cards had been only the top layer of disorganization. I'd taught Beau Ray to throw all his things into the closet and shut the door if he couldn't actually get them put away in time for company to see. I figured that's what still needed doing.

“I'm gonna go clean my room,” Beau Ray said. “Cool man.” He smiled at Joshua and hustled off. Joshua stared after him.

“He was just excited to meet you. He'll calm down,” I told him. “He's the one I was telling you is disabled.”

“I see it didn't stunt his size,” Joshua said.

“He used to play a lot of football,” I said.

“When did, you know, his head happen? You said it was a fall?” Joshua asked.

“I was thirteen,” I said, trying to remember. “It was January, so he was seventeen. So twelve years ago. He's turning thirty this summer. You'll be here.”

 

Downstairs, in addition to the living room with the TV and the two couches and Dad's old reading chair, there was Beau Ray's room and his bathroom, the dining room and the kitchen. Another set of stairs, near the door of the kitchen, led farther down, to the washing machine and the swampy basement with the Ping-Pong table that no one ever used, the computer Judy bought me, and my fan club filing cabinet. Joshua didn't say anything as I showed him around. He sniffed a bit and frowned a lot, but he didn't say a word.

Outside was the big backyard and smaller front yard, and between the front yard and the door, a covered porch with a clothesline and a rickety table. On one end sat half a motorcycle Tommy had abandoned a few summers back, and at the other, an old tire that Momma had fashioned into a marigold planter. We ended up out there after I ran out of things to show him inside. Joshua sank into our one porch chair, so I sat on the two-step stoop, looking out at the driveway, beyond which Joshua couldn't go. For a while, he held his head in his hands, like he had the worst headache. I asked him if there was anything he needed.

“A drink,” he said.

“You mean a liquor drink or a soda or something because Lars told me he didn't want—” I started saying, but he cut me off.

“No,” he said. “Nothing.”

“I usually go to the Winn-Dixie on Sundays,” I explained. “But if there's anything special you want, let me know. I could make an extra trip.”

“What the fuck is a Winn-Dixie?” Joshua snapped.

I felt my cheeks go hot. Sandy was right, I thought just then. Joshua Reed
was
a butthole. Joshua was a butthole and this was day one of ninety. The summer stretched out farther into the future than any of us could see, like the bend in Prospect Street when you turned left. There was never any way to know what might be coming at you there, so it was best to take it slow. That's what Dad had always said.

I didn't answer him, and eventually Joshua Reed looked up at me. I still didn't answer and he frowned, then looked a little ashamed, then broke out one of his smiles.

“Sorry,” he said. “Winn-Dixie?”

I took a breath and thought, okay, I'll forgive him, the way you forgive a kid who is done with time-out, even though you know that he's bound to start roughhousing again. I took a breath and thought, start slow.

“For groceries. It's a supermarket,” I told him. “I guess they don't have them in Los Angeles?”

He shook his head. “There's nothing I need. Wait. I'll let you know. I can't even think right now,” he said.

I looked at my nails. I was still sporting the polish I'd put on the night I first met Joshua Reed. It had begun to flake and crack, and I picked at it as I looked out into our driveway. A car rolled by. I didn't recognize who it was, but I waved like I always did and whoever it was waved back. Joshua turned to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, though I knew that his look carried something with it.

“You want lemonade?” I asked.

He kept staring into the street. I stood up.

“I could use a beer,” I said.

Lars had asked me not to serve Joshua alcohol so long as he was under house arrest, but that didn't mean I couldn't indulge, even if it was mostly for show. As I opened the screen door, Joshua buried his head in his hands again.

“Fuck me,” he muttered. And then louder, like he was really angry, he yelled it. “Fuck me!”

“Hey,” I said to him, walking back near. “About the swearing. You can't be doing that. You can't be swearing like that around the house.”

He turned to me. “What?” But I could tell he had heard me, because he sounded fed up. I suddenly got all nervous.

“It's just…you can't…you shouldn't…not around the house.”

Joshua looked like he didn't know where to begin. “People swear in prison,” he finally said.

“On account of Beau Ray,” I explained. I told him how Beau Ray had this bad habit—more annoying than bad, I guess—of mimicking. Especially with swear words. “We've all trained ourselves not to,” I told him.

“I'll see what I can do.”

“Thanks,” I said, and went to get my beer. From behind the screen door, I heard Joshua again.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered.

 

The house was quiet that night, but I didn't sleep well. Joshua's door was closed, and Momma had closed hers, too. As I padded down the hall, ready to crawl into bed, I wondered what Momma was really thinking. She'd been fairly closemouthed on the subject of Joshua up to then. All I knew was that she saw his house arrest as an extension of my fan club duties, as if Joshua were a hobby of mine I had to keep neat and in the right place, like the plastic horses I'd collected when I was little. She'd already told me that I'd be the one driving him to AA. I would also be the one to buy groceries and whatever else he might demand. That night, Momma had gone to bed before dinner, saying that she was tuckered and had a big day ahead. I wondered if it hadn't been the arraignment and being civil to Judy and Lars and worrying over Beau Ray. Or maybe it was just having someone in Vince's room after all that time.

I had always slept with my door open. When I was younger, it was so I could look into Vince's room and see his feet sticking up under the covers and know that he would hear anything awful or scary and could rush to my side in seconds. Not that anything awful or scary ever happened—not that he could prevent at least. And after Vince left, I'd kept my door open so that I would be able to see if he came back in the night. And years after that, it was habit. But that night, that first night with Joshua, I'd closed my door, and with all the doors upstairs closed, it felt like a different house. Like my family wasn't my own anymore. I wondered if we'd made a mistake.

Often when I couldn't sleep, I called Sandy late at night. But that night, she was with her family at the beach—would
be for the next week, too—and I was afraid I'd wake everyone. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep, I'd sit on the porch and listen to the crickets. But closing my door seemed so final, and I didn't want to take a chance on running into Joshua while I was in nightclothes. So I stared at the ceiling and wondered how long ninety days would last. Start slow, I told myself.

 

I've been an early riser since forever—or at least since my teens. Usually I'm up around six. I don't know where it comes from, since no one else in my family gets up so early. Beau Ray had long been one of those guys who'd sleep until noon in a bright room. And Momma was more of an eight o'clock riser—earlyish, but not early. But me, I've never even had to set an alarm. I could always tell myself “get up at five forty-five” or “get up at six-fifteen” and my body would obey (although daylight saving time would have me off-kilter for a couple days). So even though I didn't sleep well, I still woke up by six-thirty that first morning after Joshua moved in.

I got up, got dressed and took Momma's station wagon to SpeedLube for an oil change, and then I drove into Charles Town and it was still but seven forty-five. I had a key that got me into the county clerk's office, no matter what the time, and I went to my desk and organized my things like I'd meant to do the day before, except the arraignment had gone longer than I'd figured. For the next eighty-nine days, I was only going to be working half-time, since it turned out that we would be getting paid for taking care of Joshua.

I hadn't been thinking anything about money, I'd swear on Susan's fancy Bible, when I offered up Vince's room. Heck, I hadn't even known it the day Momma signed the guardianship papers, though I think Momma might have. Momma had told me that Judy and Lars were fixing to pay her $200 a day for the use of Vince's room and meals and laundry and not killing him (that last part being a joke). Judy
said that it was like paying for a hotel, which they would have been doing had there been such thing as hotel arrest. Judy even asked Judge Weintraub whether he thought that was fair, and he said he didn't see anything wrong with it.

Two hundred dollars a day was a lot more than I was making at the county clerk's office. It was probably more than what Momma and I together brought home. And Momma said that if we were getting paid like that to take care of Joshua, we sure as hell better take care of Joshua, which meant she wanted me to be around more.

This is the way Momma would talk: “Leanne, I'm wanting you to stick around the house more this summer.” It sounds polite and all, but if I'd ever said no, all of that niceness would be gone and she'd start in with how ungrateful I was and didn't I see how hard it had been for her, and I'd end up doing what she wanted anyway. I knew it, and she knew I knew it. But it still irked me because I also knew that it was awful convenient that Beau Ray would be watched over at the same time. And that screwed me, since summer was when Momma usually did more watching so I could take my extension courses. It's like she had forgotten that I was the one she'd pushed to think about college, well, me and Vince. I remember wondering whether Vince had found his way to college, wherever he was, as I straightened my desk in case Mr. Bellevue assigned someone else to sit there on Mondays, Thursdays and Friday afternoons.

I saw that Mr. Bellevue had left a note for me.

Leanne,
it read,
I'm terribly excited for you!!! Enjoy this experience—but of course you'll have to tell me everything! I'm sure it will be unique and memorable!!

By his use of exclamation points, I had to assume that Mr. Bellevue meant memorable in a good way. But President Kennedy's assassination was memorable, too. And the space shuttle coming down in flames. And my dad dying, even that was memorable on a smaller scale.

Of course, I hoped the summer would be memorable in a good way. For heaven's sake, Joshua Reed was going to be living in my house! He was there even as I folded up the note. He was there even as I walked out of the county clerk's office. I wondered if he'd sleep late. I wondered what he'd want to do on his first full day under our roof. I had no doubt that after a good night's sleep, he'd have relaxed some and feel more himself. Maybe I'd suggest that we rent a few movies. Maybe he'd let me listen to him practice his
Musket Fire
lines.

With the first, awkward night behind us, I felt hopeful. Ninety days was ample time to get to know someone. Sandy and I hadn't needed a month to become fast friends when we'd met in the third grade. At the end of ninety days, Joshua and I might well be inseparable. We might have private jokes. We might realize that we both hate runny eggs and love Mounds bars. Maybe he'd introduce me to some of his friends—on the phone or if ever a few of them decided to fly in and surprise him for a weekend.