The Book of Joe (15 page)

“Not really.”

“You want to cut out and go somewhere?”

I did, but I shook my head no. With Wayne and Sammy lying low, I felt like I needed to be there to scout out the situation for them. Also, there was no denying my selfish need to be seen going about my business in the midst of this scandal as someone with nothing to hide, lest I become thought of as gay by association. Carly took my hand and pressed up against me. “I think I'm going to need to stay close today,” she said, and I felt my eyes go hot with tears. I kissed Carly's hair and squeezed her hand as we walked toward homeroom, and felt a sudden stab of anger toward Wayne and Sammy. Everything had been going so well; why did they have to go and fuck it all up?

I was summoned to Dugan's office in the middle of second period. Sean and Mouse were loitering in the hall outside his office when I got there.

“Is it true about Hargrove?” Sean asked, blocking my way to Dugan's door.

“Is what true?” I said.

“Word is he's a fudge packer,” Sean said.

“I'm not familiar with that term.”

“You know, a bone smoker,” Mouse clarified happily. “A faggot.”

“Wayne's no faggot,” I said hotly.

“We have it from a pretty good source that your buddy's a butt pirate,” Mouse said, flashing an evil grin. The guy was failing English, but when it came to gay slurs he was a regular thesaurus.

“What are you getting so excited about, Mouse?” I said. “You get off on talking about faggots so much, we can only imagine where you fit into the whole bone-smoking scheme of things.”

Mouse's smile faltered, and he stepped forward menacingly, grabbing my shirt in his fists. “What do you mean?” he said through gritted teeth.

“Which word didn't you understand?”

He banged me against the lockers, hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Fucking asshole,” he said.

“There he goes again talking about fucking assholes,” I said to Sean. “Are you noticing a pattern here?”

Mouse punched me in the stomach, and he and Sean were pulling me up to hit me again when Dugan stepped out of his office. “What the hell is going on out here?” he yelled, his gruff, authoritative voice freezing us in our places. “You boys aren't getting into trouble on a game day, are you?” he said, addressing Sean and Mouse. “Or maybe you've forgotten that we play New Haven tonight.”

“No, sir,” said Sean, releasing me and stepping back, pulling Mouse with him.

“Then get your asses into class now,” Dugan commanded, and I couldn't help but think this display of academic concern was somehow being performed on my behalf. “Idiots,” he said, ushering me into his office with an apologetic grin as I sought to suck back in some of the wind that had been knocked out of me.

The walls of Dugan's office were lined with framed pictures of teams past. The shelving behind his desk contained a slew of championship trophies. On his desk, almost as an afterthought, was an old picture of the coach and his wife with their arms around two unhappy-looking boys with crew cuts and their father's dark eyes. Dugan stopped on his way around the desk and pointed to one of the framed team pictures. “There's your old man,” he said. “Nineteen fifty-eight. Now, that was a hell of a season. My third year as coach, our first championship, thanks to your old man's buzzer beater.” He sat down in his worn leather chair. “He ever talk about that game?”

“He may have mentioned it.”

Dugan studied me like a taxonomist trying to pin down a phylum and species. After a moment he nodded slowly, having determined the best course with which to proceed. “I guess you know why I asked you to come here,” he said gravely.

I shrugged. “Not really.”

“I'm concerned about Wayne Hargrove.”

“Then you should have called him in here.”

“He's absent today,” Dugan said. “I can hardly blame him, given the circumstances.”

“What do you want?” I said, sounding as annoyed as I dared.

“I want to help. Wayne's one of my boys. Whatever silly, adolescent experimentation he may or may not have done is really not of any concern to me.”

“What can you possibly do?” I said, suddenly hoping in spite of myself that maybe there was a light at the end of this tunnel.

“I can put an end to the rumors,” he said, staring intently at me. “I've already met with the team and made it clear to them that Wayne is their teammate and they are not to tolerate anyone slandering or impugning his reputation.”

I looked at him incredulously. “Your team is where this all started,” I said. “It was Mouse who spread the word to begin with.”

“The sheriff was . . . indiscreet,” Dugan conceded. “But Mouse will apologize for starting such a terrible rumor, and the sheriff will back that up if I need him to. You and I will be the only two people who know the real truth, and that truth will never leave this room.”

I thought about it for a minute. If the coach made Mouse apologize for the rumor, then maybe Wayne really had a chance. The whole thing was so unbelievable anyway, it would actually make more sense to everyone that it had been a stupid prank. “Why are you telling me this?” I said. “If you can really make this go away, why don't you just do it?”

Dugan's eyes bored into me. “I want Wayne in that game tonight,” he said.

“The game.” I nodded slowly as the full realization of what this was about dawned upon me. “Of course. You can't win without Wayne.”

“This is about more than a game,” Dugan said.

“Right. It's about the play-offs.”

“I'm only looking out for Wayne's best interests,” Dugan snarled at me. “This is not going to be easy. Mouse will not be happy about it, and the sheriff will be furious that I am making his son a scapegoat. I believe I can get them to understand the wisdom of my plan, but no one will believe it if he continues to hide.”

“Bullshit,” I spat back. “You don't want to lose your leading scorer right before the play-offs.”

Dugan stood up suddenly, and for a moment I thought he might actually lunge across the table at me. “Wayne is one of my boys,” he said slowly, towering over me menacingly. “I look after my boys. That's what this is about.”

“Really,” I said, getting to my feet. “Then tell me this. If Wayne doesn't play tonight, will you still do it? Will you still help him out?”

The heat from his stare threatened to singe my eyebrows, but I maintained eye contact. “If any one of my boys skips a game,” Dugan said softly, “he's no longer one of my boys.”

“That's what I thought,” I said, and turned to leave.

“Listen to me, you little shit,” Dugan roared at me. “If you think this school is going to reach out and embrace a faggot, then you're an idiot. He'll become an outcast. I am offering the only chance he's got to be able to show his face around here again. It's not your decision to make.”

I turned back to face him. “You're right,” I said. “I'll tell him about your offer, and I hope he takes you up on it.”

“That's the first intelligent thing you've said since you got here,” he said, sitting back down slowly.

I looked at him with contempt. “Didn't anyone ever tell you that it's just a fucking game?”

“Sure,” he said, leaning into the pressed wood of his desk with a nasty grin. “That's the universal slogan of losers. I'm surprised they haven't given it to you on a T-shirt yet.”

         

Cougars games were always well attended, but that night it was standing room only at the Bush Falls High gymnasium. It appeared as if the entire school had turned out to see if Wayne would play. The air was charged with excitement as the crowd chanted for their team to emerge from the locker rooms. When the Cougars came sprinting out onto the court, Wayne was the second-to-last one in line, and he seemed to falter for a second when he took in the size of the crowd, but he put his head down and jogged resolutely out to the half-court line, and someone threw him a ball. He sank his first warm-up shot, a jumper from the top of the key, and there were scattered cheers. I tried to catch his eye from where I sat with Carly in the bleachers, but he was determinedly not looking around at the spectators, his face grimly expressionless.

That night, Wayne scored fifty-two points, a new league record, in a performance that no one in the capacity crowd would ever forget. He ran the floor like a demon, weaving through the defense as if they were moving in slow motion. Like a wild beast suddenly freed from its cage, he tore up and down the court with a passion and fury that left even his own teammates in the dust, shaking their heads in wonder. Carly and I screamed until we were hoarse, laughing and hugging each other every time Wayne made another incredible move on his way to the basket. The cheers grew with each additional basket, but if Wayne heard them, he gave no outward sign.

With less than a minute left to play and the game safely won, Wayne signaled to Dugan that he needed to come out. He walked over to the bench to a rousing round of applause and grabbed a towel to wipe his face. Then, while the final minute was played out, Wayne turned his back on the court and finally looked up into the bleachers, where, after a few seconds, our eyes met. We grinned at each other for a moment, and then he gave a quick nod and a short wave and disappeared through the locker room door just before the final buzzer sounded and the gym erupted into a wild cacophony of cheers and applause. I didn't know it right then, but that brief wave was Wayne saying good-bye. It would be many years before he was seen in Bush Falls again.

Later that night, someone jumped Sean Tallon in the parking lot of the Duchess Diner, where the team had gone to celebrate their victory. Sean showed up to school a few days later with a broken arm and the right side of his face still mangled and swollen. He never said a word about the incident, but I could tell by the way he looked at me that Wayne had taken a short detour on his way out of town, to leave a last, parting gift for Sammy.

About four weeks later, Sammy went over the falls.

twenty

For the last two days, the scattered fragments of my past have been popping up like Starbucks franchises, so I shouldn't be surprised to come home and find Lucy Haber waiting for me on my father's front porch. Still, it throws me for a moment. She's wearing sandals with platform soles, a long, clinging skirt with a daringly high slit, and a silk blouse with a scoop neck. From where I stand in the street beside my car, it appears as if she hasn't aged at all, and only as I get closer do I notice the faint worry lines beneath her eyes and at the corners of her apprehensive smile. The lawn has acquired a few more copies of
Bush Falls
since morning, and I almost trip over one of them as I make my way up the walk, unable to take my eyes off Lucy. “Hello, Joe,” she says, her voice lower than I remember it.

“Hi, Lucy.” I come up the stairs, and we maneuver awkwardly from aborted handshakes to a clumsy, poorly timed hug. She feels firm and lithe in my embrace, not at all like a fifty-year-old woman should feel, and in her hair I smell the same intoxicating lilac-scented shampoo that overwhelmed me as a teenager.

“I heard you were here,” she says, stepping back to look at me. “I thought I'd pay you a quick visit.”

“I'm glad you did,” I say, although the jury's still out on that. I let her into the house, jingling my keys loudly in case Jared and his friend are at it again, but no one is home. I wonder what the hell I'm going to talk to Lucy about. “Would you like a drink?” I offer.

“I'm fine,” she says, looking around the foyer with mild curiosity.

“You sure?”

“Yes.” She steps into the living room and peers closely at the family pictures on the coffee table. Lucy Haber in my childhood home is like a rare astrological phenomenon, the convergence of planets with unforeseeable aftereffects. “How's your father?”

“Not too good,” I say, sitting down on the couch. After a moment she joins me there, the cushion beneath me shifting as it registers her weight. The love seat that sits perpendicular to the couch would have been the more logical and appropriate destination, I think, and I'm confused, maybe somewhat concerned, and, let's not deny it, aroused by her choice.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Lucy says. “Were you in some sort of accident?”

“What?”

Her fingers graze my face as she traces the gash near my temple. Maternal? Sexual? Oedipal? The options run through my head like a quiz show.
I'd like to poll the audience, Regis.
Lucy's touch instantly sets off the low hum of internal machinery in my lower belly, generating waves of heat that spread quickly downward. I hope to god the trembling in my thighs isn't as noticeable as it feels. “I got into a fight,” I say. “One of my more expressive critics.”

She nods, her fingers lingering for another moment before leaving my face. “I would imagine you have no shortage of those here.”

“Are you one of them?” I ask nervously. It is this exact moment I'd envisioned when I tried to convince Owen to let me remove the lustier pages concerning Lucy from the novel. Now here we are, transplanted into my nightmare/fantasy, and I am utterly exposed, my obsession no longer a secret from her. This knowledge alone wouldn't be so bad, but she knows that I know, and I know that she knows I know, and this extra loop of awareness causes my bowels to clench with terror.

“I was really moved by your novel,” she says, her lower lip trembling. “You showed me a whole new side of my son, one that as his mother I never got to see.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I can't tell you what a precious gift that was.”

I am flabbergasted. It's a testament to my prodigious egotism that I've never even considered how Lucy might feel about the characterization of Sammy in the book. I've only ever been concerned with my own salacious confessions. “I'm glad,” I stammer.

She nods and then laughs softly as she stops her tears neatly with the edge of her finger. Her nails are buffed and polished in ivory. “Sometimes, when I'm feeling lonely, I read parts of your book and it soothes me.”

Which parts?
I wonder. I study her face, still impossibly flawless and composed, her plump lips, so full of sensual promise, pressed outward in just the slightest pout, as if already anticipating the delicious, wet suction they can impart at will to your various parts. She sits back on the couch and smiles warmly at me, her teeth gleaming white, the beneficiaries of constant buffing from those phenomenal lips. I rack my brain for something to say, but my mind is a blank as the blood in my head, true to its liquid form, absconds to seek out the lowest possible point. “It's very good to see you, Lucy,” I finally say.

She nods, smiling, and gets up to leave. “It's good to see you too. It brings back a lot of memories.” I follow her back into the foyer, trying in vain not to stare at her ass. At the door, she turns around and takes my hand in both of hers. “You were a good friend to Sammy, Joe. That meant a lot to him. And to me.”

“I tried to be,” I say lamely, feeling every bit the horny hypocrite.

Lucy hugs me again, this time tightly, with the full length of her body pressed up against me. It is most definitely a different kind of hug from the first one, a loaded embrace. She does it suddenly, giving me no opportunity to contort my anatomy and create a discreet pocket for my arousal, which presses against her thigh like a red herring. She knows, I know she knows, and she knows I know she knows. Once again, our knowledge is a circle, spun around my unrepentant engorgement. She turns her head to press her lips against my ear, their gloss wet and against me, making me wish my ears had taste buds to identify what flavor she's wearing. I guess peach. “Come up to the house and see me,” she murmurs. “I want to talk to you about your book some more.”

“I will,” I say, shivering at the crush of her lips on my ear, a hot flush spreading from the base of my neck. Half a year of celibacy will do that to you.

She steps back, her fingers brushing my arms as she lets go of me. “Promise?”

I do.

         

While editing
Bush Falls,
I was torn about whether or not to include the pages dealing with my obsession with Sammy's mother, worried that Lucy might one day read the book. “The minute you start editing your writing based on the consideration of how it might be received, you've greatly compromised the integrity of the whole work,” Owen told me somberly.

“It is fiction,” I pointed out weakly.

“The fiction writer is every bit as responsible for the truth as the nonfiction writer,” Owen said haughtily. “Even more so, since he isn't constrained by factual considerations.”

“That's a contradiction in terms, isn't it?”

“Only to an obtuse literalist. And anyway, it's entirely beside the point.”

“The point being?”

Owen grinned. “Sex sells.”

         

A short while after Lucy's visit, I'm in the shower when I frighten myself badly by letting go with a piercing, anguished howl that bursts angrily out of me, raking my throat before reverberating loudly against the tiles and frosted glass door of the shower chamber. That solitary cry opens the floodgates, and for the next five minutes I stand convulsing under the hot spray as my body is racked with powerful sobs that come from deep within my belly, clawing desperately through my esophagus to escape to open air.

When it's over, I step out of the shower, feeling light-headed and congested, and wrap one towel around my waist and another over my head and shoulders, which always makes me feel like a heavyweight fighter. The tissue disintegrates in my wet hands as I blow my nose, little sodden flecks of Kleenex mingling in my snot like guppies. I study myself in the mirror, not quite sure what I'm looking for, and then, when the steam has fogged up the glass, obscuring my face, I get dressed and go page Owen.

“I'm behaving oddly,” I tell him when he returns my page.

I can actually hear him force his mouth shut against the comment he wants to make. “In what way do
you
feel you're behaving oddly?”

I tell him about my violent crying fit in the shower, and then back up to my tears in the hospital stairwell and in my father's den the night before. “Crying,” he says, “is hardly odd behavior.”

“It is for me.”

“Listen, Joe, you obviously have a significant amount of unresolved conflict concerning your family and your past.”

“No shit,” I say, struggling to keep the impatience out of my voice. “But it's never reduced me to tears. How would you explain this behavior?”

“You mean, if I were a therapist.”

“Right.”

“Which I'm not.”

“Whatever.”

“Hell, I don't know,” Owen says. “Therapy is a complex course of exploration and analysis. It's a perversion of the process to offer shotgun diagnoses.”

“But you already have one.”

“Of course I do. I'm just throwing up my usual disclaimer.”

“Duly noted. Now lay it out for me. Do you think I'm having a nervous breakdown?”

Owen sighs. “You're not having a breakdown. I don't think you have it in you.” Only Owen can make this sound like an actual character flaw. “Off the top of my head, I'd say that for many years you've been very lonely for the love of your family. It's probably a significant factor in the utter failure of all your other relationships. You're never satisfied, because no woman can fill the giant void left by your family. Now you're in your hometown, confronted with the family whose love you so desperately yearn for, and you can no longer contain your deep feelings of guilt, loneliness, and loss.”

For a long moment there are just the sounds of our respective breathing over the phone lines as I consider what he's just said. “That sounds pretty much on the money,” I finally say.

“I'd appreciate it if you would sound less surprised,” Owen says. “Not for nothing, but I am probably the smartest and most insightful person you know, bar none.”

“Thanks. What more could I ask for?”

“Drugs,” Owen says. “If I could prescribe, now that would be something.”