The Chance You Won't Return (24 page)

“Yeah, it’s really good.” I felt a little guilty about destroying and stealing her books. “I know the guy who made it.”

“Do you?” she said. “Well, you can let him know he’s got a fan.”

“Sure.” She walked away, her flat shoes padding softly on the carpet. I kept looking at the painting. It was as if Jim had this secret thing inside him. How much did I really know about him? I wasn’t the only one with secrets. I thought about everyone — Jim, Theresa, Mr. Kane, the librarian, the chess club — all existing on this one level that everyone saw. But underneath that there was a lot more, most of which you never got to see. I felt like the universe was something I could touch; it was all around me and humming with potential.

That night, I told Mom about Jim’s painting. It was close to one a.m., but I hadn’t slept before going downstairs. It was like I was waiting to talk to her. I don’t know why I couldn’t have had this conversation during the day, but with all the noise and activity of everyone else, it seemed like too much to deal with at once. During the day, I couldn’t look at her without thinking that she should have been acting differently. I knew I’d be exhausted the next day, but talking to her at night felt safer. I felt like a little kid sneaking into her parents’ room to assure herself that she was okay.

“I didn’t even know Jim could do that,” I said. “He was really good. His picture was a thousand times better than most of the other people’s paintings.”

Mom was trying to jimmy off the top of an old computer keyboard. In front of her were several other gadgets — a kitchen timer, a stopwatch, a CD player, an old handheld video game. I didn’t ask how all these things were supposed to come together, but she worked as if she had some idea of what she wanted. She didn’t look up at me when she spoke.

“I’m not much of a painter myself. I tried photography for a while, and, of course, I have my clothing line for active women.”

Since I found her collection, she’d been trying harder to drop Amelia references, as though she had to prove something to me. Mostly I ignored her. “Well, Jim is, apparently — a painter, I mean.”

“Is that something you’re interested in?”

“No, it’s not that.” I flipped the stopwatch between my fingers. “It’s like there’s a lot left I don’t know about him. Or anyone. You see people every day, but you don’t know much about them at all. It’s not bad, necessarily. But you only know this small part of them that they let you see. It’s like we’re all these icebergs, floating and passing one another.”

Mom was quiet now. She set aside her screwdriver and studied me, her eyes slick and her lips pressed together. For a moment, I thought she might actually recognize me. I froze, wanting her to say my name.

“We all have secrets,” she said. Then she swallowed and took the stopwatch from me. “I need to maintain a certain persona. G.P. says it’s part of the job.”

I slumped back in my chair. She was Amelia revived again, immortal and fearless. So I asked, “What’s with all the equipment?”

She looked up. “Didn’t I tell you? We’re going to be using radio equipment for the Pacific flight. George is keeping everything very quiet — all those reporters, you know — but I think having a two-way will be quite helpful.”

“In case you get into trouble.”

“Heaven forbid.” She sighed. “But yes . . . just in case.”

It was the first day of Thanksgiving break when I got to see inside Jim’s house. We were practicing driving, and by now I was feeling much more confident. I still refused to try parallel parking — “If I have to find a spot a mile away to avoid parallel parking, I guess that’s what I’ll have to do”— but I didn’t have to talk myself out of a panic attack every time I got behind the wheel. I was even hitting speeds above ten miles an hour on roads I shared with other cars.

Gray clouds spread across the sky, but that didn’t bother me. It had been overcast for days. Then, when I took a left turn onto Belmont, the first drops of rain splattered against the windshield. My hands gripped the wheel as I told myself that it was just a couple of raindrops, nothing to freak out about.

But then there were five more, then a dozen, and then it was pouring. Water streaked across the glass.

“Shit, shit,” I said.

“Nothing to worry about,” Jim said. “Just flip the windshield wipers.”

I’d left the turn signal on, and now a tiny arrow on the dashboard was flashing green at me. I smacked at it.

“Right, the wiper switch should be right there. Turn it.”

“Turn
what
?” I said. Rain smeared across the windshield, and my hands wouldn’t release themselves from the steering wheel. The rain seemed like pebbles instead of water; I was afraid the windows would shatter. My foot meant to hit the brake, but I pressed the gas instead and we zipped along the street.

Jim reached across and flipped the wipers on. They splashed the water away, and I could see again.

I stopped the car, breathing quickly and brokenly. “How are you supposed to drive and put on windshield wipers at the same time? Especially when you’re blinded by rain!”

Jim was trying not to laugh. “You get used to it. Want to try it again? Now that the rain can’t take you by surprise.”

“Shut up. It’s not funny.”

His smile fell. “I was just kidding.”

My heart was still pounding. From the driving manual, I’d memorized the term “hydroplaning,” when water gets between the wheels and the road, making it difficult to drive. I imagined us sliding off the road, flipping the car, and careering into someone. “It’s like you never think bad things could happen.”

“No, I just don’t think
only
bad things are going to happen.”

I leaned my head against the seat and tried to calm my breathing. Rain pattered against the windshield. “It’s like driving is all about control, and it always seems like I’m always out of control. Like no matter what, something bad is going to happen. I’m always waiting for the hit.”

Jim reached over and placed his hand on top of mine. “It’s okay. Really.”

Even with the pressure of his hand and his steady voice, it didn’t feel like enough. Just saying that things would be okay didn’t make it true. But my heart was steadying and I didn’t want to argue the point. I told Jim that I’d rather quit practicing for the afternoon. He suggested that we go to his house, since we were nearby, and maybe go over the manual instead. We switched seats.

At Jim’s house, his mom was already preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. A bowl of peeled potatoes sat on the table, and I inhaled the scent of a fruit pastry in the oven. At my house, we weren’t making a big deal out of Thanksgiving. (Except for Teddy, who decided that we all needed hand-shaped turkey name cards and Pilgrim-style hats made out of newspaper.) Dad was determined to cook a turkey, but since his culinary skills seemed limited to hamburgers and frozen pizza, Katy and I weren’t expecting much.

Mrs. Wiley wiped her hands on a dish towel, smiling at me without showing her teeth. “Alex, right?”

I hadn’t seen Jim’s mom since Halloween, when I was a little hysterical on their doorstep. “Yeah. Hi, Mrs. Wiley.” I gestured to the oven. “Whatever you have in there smells great.”

She waved a hand at me. “Just a cobbler. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart’s website.” Resting her palms on the counter, she looked from Jim to me and back to Jim again. “So. What are you kids up to? If you’re looking for entertainment, I’ve got a few onions that need chopping.”

For a second, I thought we should say okay, so Jim’s mom might get a chance to realize I wasn’t such an unstable mess, but Jim said we had driver’s ed stuff to go over and we escaped to the basement. At my house, our basement was a dank, concrete cave filled with old toys, wedding presents my parents never used, and battered sports equipment. For a couple years, I even convinced Katy that cannibal trolls lived under the basement stairs. The Wileys’ basement had been done over with carpeting, fake wood paneling, and leftover pieces of furniture. A model train set, complete with tiny trees and a small conductor, was displayed on a huge folding table in the corner. On the wall, a clock had different species of birds instead of numbers.

It was strange to think of Jim as a kid here. He and I had gone through the public school system together since we were little, but being — until this year — a grade apart, I didn’t know anything about him as a kid. I wondered if he’d had birthday parties here, with piñatas and pizza, or spin the bottle when he was a little older.

Against the wall, a bookcase overflowed with hardcover biographies and paperback novels. I glanced at the titles and noticed a row of thick photo albums. I pulled one out of its place.

“You’re kidding me,” Jim said. “Five seconds and you find the family pictures.”

He tried to grab the book away from me, but I shielded it with my body. “No way!” I said, laughing. “You should’ve thought of this before we came down here.” In the album, someone had written the title
CHRISTMAS PAGEANT FIRST GRADE
and neatly arranged photographs of small children in dresses and ties, all looking a little dazed and uncertain. I recognized the setting — the Sherman Elementary School stage, with its faded blue curtain and a dark-haired music teacher in front, probably leading the kids in a rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

“Okay, which one are you?” I asked.

Jim shook his head. “You want to look at pictures, you have to guess.”

I studied the photograph, trying to remember what Jim looked like in elementary school, back when boys were just kids we played soccer with. “This one?” I said, pointing to a little blond-haired boy in a green bow tie.

“Nice try, but not me. That’s an awesome tie, though; thanks for thinking it’s my style.”

This time I tried a boy with a reindeer sweater, whose hair was a little curlier than the first boy’s. “Him?”

Jim scratched his scalp. “I thought it’d take you longer than that.”

“Oh, make fun of the kid with the bow tie, but you had reindeer sweaters? Now you need to wear one to school on Monday.” I flipped the pages, seeing more pictures of Jim’s first-grade class onstage, then pictures from his third-grade birthday party, and of his youth soccer team. One photograph was of Jim in his soccer uniform with an old man and woman, each with an arm around Jim.

“Those are my grandparents,” he told me, tapping a finger against the picture. I asked if they were the ones he’d stayed with last year and he nodded. I studied the picture. Jim didn’t resemble either of his grandparents, who were short and stocky and wore glasses with thick lenses. But in the picture Jim had a wide, gap-toothed smile, and he leaned his head against his grandfather’s torso. They all looked right together, like family.

“They look nice,” I told Jim.

“Yeah, they are,” he said. “My grandma won’t bullshit you at all — she tells it like it is, but doesn’t make you feel stupid about anything, which was kind of what I needed. Plus, she still smokes and drinks, and, of course, she’s healthier than people half her age. Doctors totally hate her. She’s hysterical.”

He turned a page and found another picture of his grandparents, in the kitchen at Jim’s house. From the way everyone was dressed and the glasses of lemonade on the table, it looked like summer. “Granddad’s kind of a hard-ass — it’s where Mom gets it from — and when I first got there, I hated him because he’d make me get up at five and help him do chores or whatever. But then one day he had me repaint the bathroom and, of course, started giving pointers. I was like, ‘Granddad, I’m fine,’ but he kept telling me what to do, until I was like, ‘I know as much as you do about painting a room,’ and he said, ‘I went to art school — I know paint.’ That, like, blew my mind.”

“That’s where you get it from,” I said. “I mean, I saw your painting. The one in the library. It was really good.”

Jim shifted his feet. “Right, thanks. Yeah, I guess that’d be where I get it. Apparently Granddad was really talented and took art classes for a while but had to give it up when his dad got hurt and needed him to take over the farm. He had never talked about it before, but then I kept asking questions about it and he’d talk about light and technique the way he would normally talk about how the rain would affect crop drainage. Art got to be our thing.” He shrugged. “And it was nice to have something to do out there in the soybean fields.”

“But you still do it here.”

“Yeah. Actually, right here.” He nodded toward a door off the main room. “My mom only lets me paint in that part of the basement, so I don’t drip paint on anything.”

I didn’t wait for Jim to invite me to see it; I walked into the other room, which was unfinished, with concrete floors and exposed walls. All around were canvases in various states of work. Like the one in the library, there were several of birds, working out different textures.

“That was for a project,” he said. “For class. We had to study something up close — Mr. Hall’s into Georgia O’Keeffe — and I picked birds.”

He must have gone through several paintings before settling on the one that hung in the library. Most of them looked like ordinary birds — pigeons, sparrows, crows — but there were a few exotic ones, like parrots and peacocks, in the mix. Like the one in the library, the texture was amazing. I reached out and touched one of the crow paintings, brushing my fingers along a feather and expecting it to feel like a real feather and not like dried paint.