Where I Belong (14 page)

“All right, all right,” Mrs. Clancy says. “Go for a walk but don't be gone long. You haven't got your strength back, Brendan. A few blocks, that's all.”

Truthfully, I'm glad she says that. My legs feel weak and wobbly from lying in bed so long. I don't think I can make it to the woods.

Shea looks at me as if she expects me to argue, but I shrug and say, “Okay.”

We're halfway down the front walk when Mrs. Clancy calls, “And another thing—if you see that man, don't talk to him.”

Shea looks at me. “Does she mean Ed?”

“Of course.”
The pervert, the drunk, the bum
, I hear Mrs. Clancy say.

“Why does she hate him so much? Does she think he'll molest you or something?”

“She has a small mind.” I measure with my fingers about an inch apart.

“Like most adults,” she says glumly. “They always think the worst.”

“Maybe we should run away to Never Never Land,” I say.

“To do that, we have to trap Peter Pan's shadow in a bureau drawer. And then, when he comes to get it, he'll teach us to fly and then . . .” She stops and frowns. “And then and then and then.”

“And then we grow up. But we stay just like we are now. Inside, I mean. We will never be real-lifers—the kind of people who think big expensive houses and fancy clothes and boring jobs are all that matters.”

We crook our little fingers together as a promise and head down Main Street. Shea has enough money for sodas, so we stop at Joe's Diner and grab seats at the counter. The waitress looks at me. “What happened to your hair?”

“He had brain surgery,” Shea says in a low voice. “They had to shave his head and saw his skull open and take out a tumor the size of a grapefruit. If you think he looks bad now, you should've seen him last month.”

The waitress flushes and looks away from me. “I'm so sorry,” she murmurs, and busies herself fixing sodas.

Shea and I start laughing. We try to stifle it but we can't. The waitress comes back with our drinks. “If that's your idea of a joke, it's not funny,” she tells Shea, and slams our glasses down on the counter. “That will be three dollars. I was going to give him his for nothing, but not now.”

Shea shoves three wrinkled dollar bills across the counter and the waitress takes them. The cash register is at the other end of the counter. She rings up the sale and stays there without looking at us again.

It's three thirty, too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so the diner is almost empty. Two old ladies are sitting in a booth having coffee and talking loudly about their grandchildren and how ungrateful they are because they never write thank-you notes. “I'm not giving Emily a birthday present next year,” one says, and the other agrees. “Shannon won't get one either.”

“Those cranky old ladies are definitely real-lifers,” I tell Shea.

“And so is the waitress.” We glance at her. She frowns at us. We are not funny. We are not cute. We are not nice.

We finish our sodas and trade the fresh cold air of the diner for the hot stale air outside. It smells like it's been breathed and rebreathed by thousands of people—used air, you could call it. No longer fresh.

Even though I'm really tired, we walk through the town park, a place I rarely go for fear of meeting one of my enemies. The benches are occupied by old people, some dozing, some just sitting. They remind me of passengers at the rail of a boat, waiting to see land. The swings hang on their chains, empty except for one little kid who is pumping as hard as he can. He looks like he's hoping to fly over the top and launch himself into outer space. At the base of a Confederate soldier's statue, I see Sean and his friends. Three teenage girls have stopped to talk to them. The girls fiddle with their hair, shift their weight from hip to hip, giggle.

I grab Shea's arm and pull her away, turn back to the park's entrance. She looks at the boys. “It's them, isn't it?” she asks. “The ones who beat you up.”

“Yes.” I walk faster, fearful of hearing one call out,
There he is
.

Shea hurries after me. “I know who they are. They live around the corner from me in those apartments at the end of the street. They sell drugs. The cops are always after them.”

When we're a safe distance from the park, I sit down on a bus stop bench to catch my breath. Shea sits next to me.

“Do you think Sean is a real-lifer?” Shea asks.

I think about it, not sure what to say. “He's something else. He wants what real-lifers have, though—money, cars, houses, vacations, all that stuff. But . . .” I shrug and lift Shea's arm to look at her watch. “It's almost time for dinner. Mrs. Clancy's going to be furious.”

We walk together to the end of my street. “Will you be in summer school tomorrow?” Shea asks.

I nod. We say goodbye, and I walk slowly up the street. In this neighborhood, the houses are one-story ramblers made of brick, probably all built at the same time because they seem to come in three basic look-alike styles. One has the front door in the middle. One has the front door on the left. One has the front door on the right. All have at least one picture window. Some have shutters, some have fences, some have lawn decorations. American flags flutter from most of them.

All of them are as tidy and well cared for as Mrs. Clancy's house. They remind me of an old Beatles song about Penny Lane and blue suburban skies.

Several men push loud power mowers up and down their lawns. Someone cooks hamburgers on a grill. The smell sometimes tempts me to become a carnivore. A woman waters her flowers.

Except for the lawn mowers, it's a quiet summer evening. Long shadows make the grass look even greener.

I realize I don't know a single person on this street. No kids my age live here. Maybe that's why.

M
RS. CLANCY LOOKS UP
from the pot she's stirring and frowns. “Well, look what the cat dragged in. I thought I told you not to be gone long.”

I slide into my seat and watch her ladle pasta and sauce on my plate. “Marinara,” she says. “No meat.”

I watch steam curl up from the pasta. It's way too hot for a meal like this, but I figure I'd better eat it since she went to the trouble of leaving meat out.

She sits down across from me. “You know what? I talked to that pediatrician about growing boys needing meat, and she said not to worry about it, just to make sure you get your protein from cheese and nuts and things like that.” She waves a hand at the shaker of Parmesan cheese. “Take as much as you like.”

I sprinkle a pile of grated cheese on the marinara sauce and watch it melt. Mrs. Clancy does the same.

“You know something else?” she asks. “Dr. Phillips said it's good for people my age to cut back on red meat. She gave me a pamphlet about cholesterol and suggested I talk to my doctor about it.”

This might be the most Mrs. Clancy has ever said at dinner. Usually she eats with one eye on the little TV she keeps on the kitchen counter, but tonight it's turned off. I wonder what else she's told Dr. Phillips about me. And what Dr. Phillips has said she should do with me, the problem boy.

Suddenly she stares across the table at me, a frown creasing her forehead. “I've been thinking about that girl. Is she really the only friend you have?”

The question takes me by surprise. To avoid answering, I swirl my spaghetti around my fork. It's finally cool enough to eat.

“Pretty much.” I sop up sauce with my bread.

“Is one of her parents black?”

“Well, her mother's white and her stepfather's white, but all I know about her real father is that he was killed in Afghanistan.” I look her in the eye. “Why do you want to know? What difference does it make?”

Mrs. Clancy takes a sip of iced tea. “I just wondered, that's all.”

She
just wondered. That's all
. Mrs. Clancy doesn't need to know anything about Shea. Or me. It's none of her business.

“It's too late in the summer for Little League,” she says, veering off in a totally different direction, “but soccer season's coming up. Maybe in the fall, when school starts . . .”

She breaks off with a sigh. “Dr. Phillips says I need to accept you just the way you are, but if you, if we—Oh, I don't know what to do with you. It's not as easy as she thinks.”

For once she isn't angry. She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't spout the usual stuff—I'm irresponsible, selfish, lazy, etc., etc., etc. She actually sounds like she's trying to start over with me. But she doesn't know how. Well, I don't know how to start over with her.

Mrs. Clancy sits there for a moment tearing her bread apart, not eating it, just crumbling it. “I've been taking care of foster kids for twenty years and never had the problems I've had with you.” She frowns. “Don't get me wrong, Brendan. I'm not saying it's all your fault. I just don't have the energy I once had. I ought to be more patient with you, I know I should, but I don't have the patience I once had either.”

I don't know what to say, so I start clearing the table. I watch her get up. She moves slower than she used to, and there's a white stripe along the part in her red hair. Her hands are ropy with veins. It's true. She's getting old. I surprise myself by asking if she wants some help with the dishes.

“That would be nice.” Mrs. Clancy washes and I dry. We don't talk, just stand side by side as if we've been doing the dishes together for years. Outside the window above the sink, I can see the man next door working in his garden.

“You want to watch TV?” she asks. “
Jeopardy!
's on after the evening news.”

This is something new. She's never invited me to watch TV with her. Cautiously I join her on the sofa, leaving lots of space between us. I don't feel comfortable, but I think it might be smart to keep on her good side—which I honestly didn't realize she had.

The local weatherman is talking about the heat wave, which will continue all week. Temperature in the upper nineties, humidity to match, air quality is bad, and old people should stay inside. So should people with asthma.

Mrs. Clancy says, “Thank the lord for air conditioning. When I was your age we didn't have anything but window fans. We spent a lot of time in cool places like movie theaters and drugstores.”

“The people I stayed with before I came here didn't have air conditioning,” I tell her. “It was horrible.”

The weatherman concludes by mentioning a hurricane is gathering strength off the coast of Cuba. Charlotte could pack a wallop if she hits the East Coast but there's nothing to worry about yet.

“It won't come this far inland,” Mrs. Clancy says. “Heavy rain, maybe. Some wind. That'll be the worst of it.”

She leans forward. The
Jeopardy!
music has begun. Alex Trebek walks out smiling and greets the audience. “Isn't he the handsomest man?” she asks. “I've been watching this show a long time and he just gets better-looking every year. I wish I knew his secret.”

“Rich people always know stuff we don't,” I say.

The contestants join Alex and he starts the introductions. One is a schoolteacher from Missouri, another is a lawyer, and the third is an accountant. All three are men. The accountant has won for three weeks in a row and he has twenty thousand so far.

Mrs. Clancy sighs. “I wish I was smart enough to get on the show and be a bigtime winner.”

“What would you do with the money?”

“First I'd quit my job at the card shop and go on a cruise. I might even try my luck at one of the casinos in Atlantic City. You can take a bus from Roanoke.”

The game starts before Mrs. Clancy has a chance to lose her winnings in Atlantic City. I wonder if she'd take me on the cruise—probably not. Probably I wouldn't want to go anyway.

The first contestant picks the category English Literature, and I amaze Mrs. Clancy by giving all the right answers. At the end of the show, she stares at me. “For somebody who almost flunked sixth grade, you sure know a lot,” she says. “Why, with a brain like yours, you could win millions on
Jeopardy!
”

We watch a few more shows, but by nine o'clock I'm ready for bed. The new Mrs. Clancy has tired me out. I don't know how long our détente will last, but I have a strange feeling we might get along better now. Except for her questions about Shea, she was really nice tonight. Dr. Phillips must have given her an earful.

 

The next day, I go to summer school. As soon as we're dismissed, Shea and I cross the train tracks and head for the woods. Soon, the trees close in around us. Their straight trunks tower above us, soaring like pillars in a cathedral. We breathe in the smell of damp earth and moss. Above our heads, leaves rustle and sigh. Sunlight flashes down here and there in shafts the color of pure gold and puddles the ground with light. A bird sings
bloggit, bloggit, bloggit
over and over again.

As usual we walk quietly, Shea and I. We don't talk above a whisper. She knows the law of the forest.

We scramble up the tree and check our stuff. It seems like we've been gone for a long time, but everything is just the way we left it, except for a few acorns squirrels have dropped.

Suddenly the bushes part below us and the Green Man steps into the clearing. He's wearing a T-shirt with Bob Dylan's picture on the front and a list of concerts on the back with dates from 1988 to 2000. It was black once, but now it's faded to a greenish color. If he'd been wearing that shirt the day I met him, I wouldn't have thought he was the Green Man.

It's the first time I've seen him since he carried me to Mr. Hailey's house, and I'm not sure how I feel about him. Part of me is still mad, I guess. But there he is, old and shabby, grinning at Shea and me like we're still the best of friends. I don't know. Maybe we are. Maybe we aren't.