Mean Season (8 page)

“Joshua's always been good with the press,” Judy said.

“I mean Beau Ray. He's been out talking to the technicians since we got back from the Y. I'm not sure they'll be able to shake him.”

“Your mother's not going to like that, is she?”

“So long as he's happy,” I told her.

Sandy

T
he next day was Sunday, and finally Sandy was back. It seemed amazing all that had happened while she was with her family at the beach. She called in the morning, said she'd made it home safe and when would be a good time to come by? I knew she wanted to meet Joshua, but she also said she wanted to talk to me about something, and it sounded important. I said to come by whenever. I told her to slip in the back way though, through Brown's field and into our backyard, unless she wanted to deal with the reporters. She said that she didn't think her vacation update was front-page news.

Momma was at church and then meeting Bill Weintraub for lunch (which she hadn't told me directly, but I knew all the same), and Beau Ray was out front with the television guys. Sandy and I sat on lounge chairs in the backyard, sipping iced tea. She had always looked like a cat to me, like a lion, especially in the summer after she'd worked on her sun.
That day, Sandy was very tan, golden brown all over, from her hair to her toes. Even her eyes.

Every year at the same time, the Wilsons closed their service station for two weeks and went to stay with Mr. Wilson's brother who lived at Dewey Beach, in the Delaware part of the Delmarva Peninsula. Basically, it was a time for playing Chinese Checkers and Yahtzee, eating crab dinners and practicing putt-putt golf. I'd gone with her a few times when I was growing up. Her brother, Charlie, would bring his best friend and Sandy would bring me, and we'd spend the two weeks fighting, boys versus girls. Sandy and I would usually lose.

That year, only Sandy and her parents had gone. Charlie's boss had refused to give him time off, so Sandy had hours to kill by herself. She told me how she had explored Ocean City and Fenwick Island and Bethany Beach to the south, and Rehoboth to the north. In Rehoboth, she'd met Alice, who was around our age and also stuck with relatives on an extended family reunion. Sandy said that I really had to meet Alice one day. She was fearless, is how Sandy described her. Alice had wanted to break into the go-kart speedway after hours. She had tried to teach Sandy to surf. I said that, yeah, of course I wanted to meet her sometime.

Sometimes, people give you big news—like, “I'm moving to Nebraska” or “I'm having an affair with my boss”—and you're caught utterly unawares. You think, how is that possible? Do I even know you at all? And maybe the point is that you didn't.

But sometimes, what seems like it would be a surprise hits on the quieter side. Like a puzzle piece, missing for so long that you'd accepted the incomplete picture as finished. Click the piece into place, and you can finally see all you were meant to see.

Sandy talking about the beach got me thinking. It got me thinking about all the fries with vinegar we had eaten on the
boardwalk, the bikinis and sunglasses we had tried on, and the skeeball we'd played, trading in our winning tickets for sawdust-stuffed plush bears. It got me thinking about Barton Albert who had been Sandy's boyfriend for three years, up until the year before. About the bars we'd gone to and the guys who'd bought us beer, and how she had always thanked them politely, then looked away. I'd always thought that was her version of hard-to-get.

Now things were different. Or rather, something that had always existed had at last been revealed. Sandy said that she didn't want anything between us to change, and neither did I. I felt closer to Sandy than I did to my blood sister, Susan. I didn't want to lose that. I was about to say so when Joshua slid open the screen door and walked outside.

“So you're the famous Sandy,” he said. He was wearing sunglasses and shorts and the ankle sensor, of course, but that's all. His hair curled around his ears and jawline. “Leanne talks about you a lot.”

“Yup,” Sandy said.

Joshua looked over at me. I thought about what he'd said on the phone two days before, how he'd described me to someone as a “fucking hick.” I hadn't told Sandy all of what he had said. I felt too bad about it. It made me hate the sound of my voice and the look of everything I wore. It made me hate our house and the marigold planter made from a tire and our cars that both could have used new shocks and upholstery. Everything. It even made me hate Pinecob, and it seemed like a cop-out to hate my hometown, so long as I was still living in it. So with all this running through my mind, I'd hardly spoken to Joshua since, and if he had even noticed, he hadn't asked why Vince's things were suddenly gone from his room. I picked up the magazine lying beside my chair.

“You've sure got a nice tan,” Joshua was saying to Sandy. “I need to work on mine.” He looked at his arms and flexed his triceps. I looked away.

“I've been at the beach,” Sandy said.

“Right. I guess that's why I haven't seen you around. You should come around. I get so bored during the day. I need to have some stimulating company,” Joshua said. “And a wading pool would be nice.”

“Sorry, sweetpea,” Sandy said. “This nurse is working days until the end of the month at least. But if you lose an appendage and end up in the hospital, I'll take real good care of you. Besides, you got Leanne,” Sandy said. She patted my hand. “She's stimulating.”

“Of course she is,” Joshua said quickly. He smiled. “But she's got to be sick of me by now. Aren't you, Leanne?”

I looked up from the magazine and nodded.

“See?” Joshua said.

Sandy looked at me like she was trying to talk with only those golden eyes of hers. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. I nodded, just enough so that she could see. Sandy had a very seductive smile. Her patients, men and women, were always falling for her. The Nightingale Effect, she called it, but I thought it was Sandy's smile, and maybe the way she looked in her nurse's uniform. She turned back to Joshua.

“Okay,” she said, smiling at him.

“Okay, what?” he asked.

“It's way too hot out here,” Sandy sighed, suddenly all girly. She gazed at him with her lion eyes. “I've got to get inside, where it's dark.” She rose from her chair and stretched.

I watched Joshua watch her.

“And cool.” She smiled at him again. “You're game, aren't you?” she asked him. “I know you want to get inside.”

Joshua smiled. “You know I do,” he said. He was looking at her like he couldn't believe his luck.

Sandy turned back to me for a second. “Leanne, you want anything?”

I shook my head and watched them disappear into the dark of the house. I looked back at my magazine, but I
couldn't concentrate, so I sort of stared around the yard. I found myself staring at the trees behind the shed, the stand of dead oaks stripped bare by a gypsy moth hatch a few years earlier. There were maybe ten of them, all old trees and tall, and their craggy limbs still reached out, reminding me of the evil apple trees from the
Wizard of Oz,
grabbing for living creatures to hold onto.

I sipped my iced tea and listened hard, but I couldn't hear anything from inside the house. Most of me really trusted Sandy, especially now. But a lot of me was still jealous and itchy. I didn't think I'd ever heard her so determined to charm. The way she had dropped her voice to a purr. The way she had stood there, waiting for him, her tan legs just a little farther apart than they needed to be. She'd never acted that way with any of the guys who crossed bars to offer her beer. I doubted that Barton Albert had ever received such treatment. Had Alice taught her this?

A few minutes later, Sandy slid open the screen door and stepped back outside. She sat down at the end of my lounge chair and put her hand on my foot.

“So?” I asked. “Did you? You know, anything?” Anyone else, it would have been hard to ask. But this was Sandy. We told each other everything and always had. Just about.

“Are you kidding?” Sandy asked. Her voice was back to normal. “Do you actually think I'm different now than two weeks ago? I'm not different. I'm just more me now.”

I was half embarrassed for being worried.

“All I did in there was sit him down and point out a few relevant facts. Things he needed to hear and a few things I knew you'd never say yourself,” Sandy said.

“What things?” I asked.

“Just some things. He doesn't know how good he's got it here. Damn whiner.”

“No, really, what things?”

Sandy rolled her eyes. “I said that you were the best damn
fan club president a guy like him could ever hope to have. And that if he didn't behave, I'd tell you to quit. I said that you were exceptionally talented.”

“At what? Talented how?”

“I don't know. Just talented. Make him guess.” She smiled at me. “Oh, and I told him that you were the valedictorian and the star of our tennis team and also the prom queen.”

“What? I don't even have a tennis racquet. Why?”

Sandy looked a little embarrassed. “It just sort of came out. I wanted him to think you're cool.”

“So you had to lie? Am I that uncool?” I asked her.

“No, no—I mean, that you've
always
been cool,” she said quickly. “Besides, the rest was all true.”

“Great.”

“Listen, I gotta go,” she said. “I got laundry. Talk to you tonight, okay? You sure you're okay, about everything?”

“I'm okay. We're good. Let's talk tonight. I do want to meet Alice.”

Sandy nodded and left, walking out the way she'd arrived, through the trees at the edge of the backyard. She was gone by the time Joshua came back outside.

“So,” he said. He sat down on Sandy's lounge chair. I pretended to read my magazine. “She called me a butthole,” he said, and laughed a little.

“She's my best friend,” I said. “What did you expect?”

Joshua nodded. I watched him out of the corner of my eye.

“Anything else?” I asked. I realized then that it didn't matter what sort of résumé Sandy had given me. He'd forget it, or hadn't listened to begin with. It didn't affect him.

“That Sandy's a little scary,” Joshua said. He turned to me like he was about to ask something, then he looked away. Then he looked back. “So is she really a lesbian?” he asked. “She told me she's a lesbian.”

I looked up from the magazine. “Yeah. She told me that, too.” I said. “She met someone when she was at the beach. I guess it all clicked.”

“Huh,” Joshua said. “It's a good thing they don't all look like her. Life would be harder than it already is,” he said. He looked over at me. “You're not one, are you?” I threw him the
Cosmopolitan
I'd been reading.

“Fuck you,” I said, and got up to go inside.

“Hey, I thought we weren't supposed to swear around here!” he said right before I slid the glass door closed.

Sunday Shopping

I
think I already mentioned how I went to the Winn-Dixie pretty much every Sunday afternoon to buy groceries for the week ahead. That Sunday, Joshua's seventh day, the first day of Sandy being back and me hearing that she was in love with a woman named Alice, just a day after all those vans started hanging around our driveway making noise and asking questions, that Sunday, maybe I was just a little pricklier than usual. It seemed a lot to take in a week. Momma and Beau Ray were apparently able to go on like nothing had changed. Maybe for them, not much had. I was the one who was only working half time, but couldn't take any classes in my free hours. I was the one who was supposed to play hostess to some guy who alternated between wanting nothing to do with me and wanting me to run his errands or fawn over an old interview in which some geezer said he looked like Gregory Peck. Pretty as Joshua was, I can tell you, he didn't look much like Mr. Peck.

So maybe I was a little distracted that afternoon, because I didn't even consider that anyone might follow me to the Winn-Dixie, or want to interview me about Joshua and what he liked to eat. But of course, that's what happened.

I'd gotten my cart and pulled out my shopping list. I always worked from a list, so it wouldn't take me too long to buy everything for the week. Joshua had added a few requests, but for the most part, seemed content to eat whatever we put in front of him. I was surprised by that. I'd heard all these stories about L.A.-types wanting bottled water ice cubes and special nonfat bacon. Being from a small town himself, maybe Joshua had low expectations. Or maybe he just didn't want to ask me for anything.

Beau Ray's old friend Max Campbell generally worked Sundays, so before I started shopping, I rolled my cart over to the door of the managers' office and poked my head inside.

“Hey, Max,” I said.

He was watching TV with one of the guys from the butcher department. “Hey,” Max said. He stood up and came to the door. “Got the Gitlin Sunday list?”

“Got it,” I said.

“Well, come on, girl. Let's get a move on then,” he said, stepping out into the store.

That might make it sound like Max and I were good friends, but we weren't. Most Sundays, he would simply wave from the office, or talk with me for a few minutes before I wandered off to start filling my cart. To be fair, in the past few months he had walked with me more often—a few times, maybe four. I took that as a sign that Max was getting bored with the Winn-Dixie, even though he never said one negative thing about it. I could have asked, I suppose, but I didn't want to draw attention to the increased frequency of his company—in case it would have scared him off. Part of me always felt like I was walking beside a rare deer that stayed
nearby so long as you pretended not to notice it. Look at it straight on and it would startle and disappear forever.

“I need to get sardines,” I said.

Max wrinkled his nose. “Since when do you buy sardines?” he asked.

I shrugged. “They're on the list,” I said. I didn't like to be cagey around Max but I'd promised Judy that I wouldn't go around spouting off facts and stories about Joshua Reed. Turns out, I didn't need to be half so cautious.

“I hear you've got something of a houseguest,” Max said. He looked me straight in the eyes, and when I tried to look away, he held my chin so that I couldn't. Not that I minded having to look at him.

Here's what I saw when I looked at Max Campbell: I saw the guy who once ran into the middle of traffic to save a dog that had been hit by a car. I watched it happen, and I screamed for him, because by that point, I'd had some experience with death and didn't want any more. I watched it happen and even as I watched, I knew that the dog wouldn't make it, but Max ran out into the road anyway. Later, after the vet had put the dog down and Momma had given Max a new T-shirt to wear, since his had been ruined by blood, Max admitted that, yeah, he'd figured that the dog was too broken to live. “But I couldn't let it die all scared like that,” he'd told me.

When I looked at Max, I also saw the gangly, twelve-year-old boy my brother Beau Ray brought home after school one day, soon after the Campbells moved to Pinecob. Max, who already had a job by then, helped his dad sell peanuts and popcorn at the minor league baseball stadium. That was a forty-five minute drive, each way, twice a week, and he didn't even get to keep what he earned.

And of course I saw the guy I'd dreamed of marrying, all through those silly middle-school years, trying out “Leanne Campbell” and “Max loves Leanne” and “Leanne-n-Max,
TLA” (meaning “true love always”) in my best cursive. I learned quick to rip out those notebook pages though, what with Beau Ray always grabbing a sheet for his paper football games.

Most people looking at Max wouldn't see the things I saw. They'd see straight off that he was good-looking, with these crazy blue eyes, the color of brand-new jeans. And a sort of heavy, brown hair that faded gold in the summer sun, and a perfect smile, like Robert Redford, almost. People also noticed, after a while at least, how he was missing most of his right earlobe, from when a dog (not the one he tried to save) bit him when he was three.

And now here he was, holding my chin and asking me about my “houseguest.” Max looked amused, like he was in a real light mood—which didn't seem fair, given all the heavy things I was dealing with.

“Someone at
my
house? What do you mean?” I asked. “What did you hear?”

Max dropped his hand. He leaned in as if to tell me a secret. It was probably as close as he'd ever been to me, at least since I was twelve and started needing a bra and Momma said I shouldn't play touch football with Beau Ray's friends anymore. All of my nerves set to tingling at once. I could feel the heat of his cheek almost touching mine. I caught the barest scent of him and wanted more. But I knew that Max likely had no conception of this, of any of this. He was just leaning in so as to seem all hush-hush.

“I heard he's going to be there for ninety days. Did you actually think there was such thing as privacy around here?” He stepped away again and looked all satisfied with himself.

“I hoped,” I said. “I mean, we can't get cable or California Red Ale, but heaven forbid, you try to keep something quiet or personal.” I knew as I was saying them that the words were coming out more snappish than I meant—or rather, I was snappish about those things, but Max was hardly to
blame (even if he was associate manager and could probably have ordered the California Red Ale that Joshua, the night before, had mentioned he favored).

“Didn't mean to get you riled, Leanne. Honest,” Max said. “I only wondered if it was true.” Max dropped a bag of carrots into my shopping cart. Beau Ray went through a bag each week.

I looked at the carrots and felt guilty. Why shouldn't Max be allowed a little satisfaction?

“You didn't upset me,” I said. “I was there already. It's not like he wants to be with us. Tell the truth, he's not very nice,” I said.

Max frowned. “Ain't that a wonder. You want me to kick his ass?”

I knew he wasn't serious, but it was nice to have the offer. “You wouldn't really, would you?”

“Not without a pretty big reason,” Max admitted. “Do you think I could take him?”

I tried to imagine Joshua standing right beside Max. They were probably pretty evenly matched, Joshua maybe a hair taller, but I knew what the right answer was.

“No question about it,” I said to him. Max smiled again and I felt like I'd paid up.

That's when the camera crew came up to me, right there in the middle of the Winn-Dixie produce department. There were three of them—a man with a big news camera, another with headphones and cords and a woman with a microphone. The woman wore really red lipstick and had blond hair that did the sort of perfect flip I could never get my hair to do.

She smiled at me and said something like, “Excuse me, Leanne, Marcy Thompson from ABC's
Hollywood Express?
I was wondering whether I could have a minute of your time. That okay? Great!” A light flicked on above the camera, and it felt as if a laser beam had pinned me into place.

“What are you doing?” is what I heard myself ask, but Marcy Thompson didn't reply. I think she had a list of questions she wanted to get through, whether or not I answered them.

“I understand you've got a special visitor in your house,” she said.

I nodded.

“Is it true that Joshua Reed, the actor, was remanded—”

“It's true,” I managed to say. “He's there.” I looked for Max, but he suddenly seemed far off. I tried to catch his eye, but he just stared at the camera and the light and the woman with perfect hair.

“That must be very exciting,” Marcy said. “Are you getting some special foods for him today? Is there anything in particular he likes to eat?”

“I'm only getting what's on my list,” I said, and held the paper up like a shield that might protect me from Marcy and
Hollywood Express.
It didn't.

“What's it like waking up with Joshua Reed in the house?” Marcy asked me.

“Are you kidding?” I said.

She blinked at me and bobbed her head a little bit and held the microphone still. I'm not sure why, but I felt obligated to tell her.

“Imagine you're at breakfast and some stranger walks in, asking where's the coffee. That's pretty much what it's like. In the morning at least.”

All the while, I'd been backing slowly away from her and the camera, and right at that moment, I'd backed up against a pyramid of apples and couldn't go any farther. I must have bumped it a little hard, or in the wrong place, because I felt the pyramid shift, and a tumble of apples roll down behind me.

“Ooh!” Marcy Thompson said. “Watch out!”

I spun around to try to catch them.

“It's okay, Leanne,” I heard Max say. “Don't worry about it.” He was suddenly next to me again, and put his arm out to stop the apples from careening every which way. “Sorry, ma'am, but we've got a bit of an applelanche here.” He said this to the woman with the microphone and the perfect hair. She laughed.

The man with the headphones suddenly pulled them off and took a cell phone from his pocket.

“Yeah?” he said into it.

“Cut here,” Marcy said to the camera man, and the bright light went out. I could see purple and yellow spots when I blinked.

“There in ten,” the man on the cell phone said and hung up. “We've got Reed, back at the house. Exclusive.”

“Yes! Psych!” Marcy said. She turned back to me and Max. “Thanks guys. See you later.”

I turned to Max. “I'd better get back to work,” he said. An apple fell onto my left foot and bounced away.

 

That night, Beau Ray and Joshua and I sat in the living room and watched ABC's
Hollywood Express
exclusive interview with Joshua Reed. It had been taped in our backyard while Momma was out of the house. Joshua looked relaxed and friendly. He laughed with Marcy, and sounded serious and remorseful in all the right places. He talked about “the pressures” he'd been under and how “the experience” had taught him so much and how he was just trying to get back on track and how much he appreciated the good wishes from Marcy and her staff. By the time he stopped talking, Marcy looked like she would have been willing to curl up with him in Vince's room for the rest of his sentence. Part of my interrupted interview also made it in. The stranger at breakfast part. And also the apples, and Max calling it an “applelanche.”

“I get my own coffee,” Joshua complained. “Some of the time at least.”

“Whatever,” I said. Ending the day with a national news report that showed me wrecking apples at the Winn-Dixie seemed right on target. “I'm going to bed,” I said.

But the phone rang as soon as I got upstairs. It was Judy.

“I just finished watching the
Hollywood Express
interview,” she said. “Next time, try to sound a little more enthusiastic, okay?”

I told her that I was sorry. “They followed me. I didn't expect it,” I said.

“Of course. I forget that you're not used to this,” Judy said.

“But Joshua sounded good,” I said.

“Didn't he though? That's my boy.
Hollywood Express
doesn't have the highest rating, but it'll still do a lot for us. I told you he's a great actor. So listen, who was that guy with you, the one with the apples?”

“Who?” I asked her. “Max?”

“Is that his name? Is he a friend of yours or does he just work there?”

I told her that Max was a friend—or rather, how he and Beau Ray had been good friends, and how I saw him every now and again, and most Sundays.

“He looks good on screen,” Judy said.

“And off,” I told her. “In high school, he was voted most photogenic.”

“Oh really?” Judy asked. “Do I sense that you harbor a crush?”

I felt my heart start to race. I regretted being so obvious. “I don't know. I shouldn't. I don't really want to talk about it,” I said.

“I didn't mean to pry,” Judy assured me.

“It's just,” I tried to explain, “Max is great, but everyone will tell you that he's still got a thing for his ex-wife. It seems like a lot of uphill.”

“Ah, the old ex-wife,” Judy said. “Why don't you ask him out and find out?”

“God, no!” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because I've known him since I was eight, for one.”

“That's a long time to harbor a crush,” Judy said.

I wanted to change the subject. I didn't want to get to the second reason. I asked her why she'd given an exclusive interview to
Hollywood Express,
if it didn't have a high rating.