A Face in Every Window (7 page)

I wouldn't look at her. I looked at the sink instead. I yelled at the sink "I care about what people think. I care, Mam. You and Larry and Dr. Mike—what are you doing? What about me and Pap? What about us?" I lifted my head and saw Mam's bewildered face. I wanted to cry. I wanted to tell her I didn't know what I thought or what I was feeling. I just knew that things felt wrong and I wanted them to feel right. I wanted her to hug me the way she had hugged Larry, and yet I knew that if she tried to touch me I would push her away.

Mam must have seen it, my weak moment, the moment when I thought I wanted her to hug me, because she moved toward me, and she lifted her hand toward my face. But I couldn't let her touch me. I bolted from the kitchen, slamming the door behind me and running toward the creek.

I stood ankle deep in the water and listened to Pap and Larry talking in our yard. Larry stood on the roof and Pap stood down below, shouting warnings to Larry about taking down the Nativity set.

"Don't break the lightbulbs," he said "See, they got lightbulbs, is how they light up. See them, Larry? Don't break 'em."

I heard Pap shout to Mam when she left with Dr. Mike to take her test, and then I walked on, down the creek, moving from rock to rock, past the Polanskis', the Wallaces', the McCloskys' houses, thinking how this would be my last time at the creek.

I spent all morning wading in the water and examining the flora and fauna around me. When I got hungry I wandered down to the Seeleys', realizing it would be the last time I could just walk over and spend the day hanging out with Tim and his father. Mr. Seeley didn't get home from work until after five, and I looked forward to it all afternoon. I wanted to spend one last good evening with him, but the evening didn't go well at all. He was upset about Larry moving out to New Hope. He said Mam wasn't right in the head, first marrying my "retard" father and then inviting his own drug-addict son to live with her. "She's just asking for trouble," he said. "How's he ever going to learn anything if people keep bailing him out?"

I cut the evening short and, feeling irritable and disappointed, said my good-byes to the Seeleys and wandered on back home.

No one was there when I got to the house. I found a note Mam had left for me on the kitchen table. It said, "Gone for a drive in Larry's van. I passed my test!"

A few minutes later the van rolled into our driveway and all the doors opened at once. Larry got out of the front seat with Mam, and Pap and Bobbi Polanski hopped out of the back.

I stood outside on the stoop with my arms crossed, watching the four of them laughing, each one carrying a bag from McDonald's.

Pap waved to me. "We're going to have a picnic for our last night Come on, JP, to the creek."

"I've already eaten," I said, waving, trying to look cheerful, casual. When had Bobbi Polanski joined the crew?

"Well, come on with us, anyway," Mam said.

I glanced at Larry snitching fries from his bag, and then at Bobbi, who was hanging back behind Pap. I saw that she had her arm in a sling.

"No," I said. "No, thanks, I've still got a box to pack."

Mam handed her bag to Larry and told them all to go on without her, she'd be there in a minute. Then she headed toward the house. I went back inside and hurried toward my room.

I didn't want to talk with Mam just then, but she followed me back.

"How long are you going to act this way?" Mam asked when she caught up to me. She stood in the doorway in her jeans and a T-shirt, her hair in a ponytail, and I thought she looked young. She looked young enough for people to think Larry was her husband.

I turned away from her and chucked my basketball shoes, my basketball, and the book on chaos and complexity I had been reading all into my last cardboard box. "Is Polanski living with us, too, now?" I asked, keeping my back to her and not answering her question.

"No, JP, but she's eating with us."

"What's with her arm?"

"Why don't you come out and ask her yourself?"

I threw a sweatshirt into the box. "You know, Mam, you have a knack for choosing just the people I happen to hate, who the whole town hates. That ought to tell you something, don't you think?" I looked up at her.

"Yes, it does. It sure does." Mam nodded and crossed her arms in front of her. She leaned against the side of the doorway.

"Mr. Seeley was right," I said, setting her up, wanting to hurt her.

"Right about what?"

"You're not right in the head." I pointed to my own head. "You're not all there. Mam, you go for every misfit and oddball that comes along. No, you don't just go for them, you marry them!"

I gasped, realizing what I had just said. I had gone too far. I could feel my face burning. I took a step toward Mam and tried to speak. "I—I—"

"You've said enough, JP," M^m said, backing away, her voice quiet "Finish packing and get to bed. You need your sleep."

She left and I didn't call her back. I didn't say anything. I flopped down on my bed and just sat, waiting for the dark.

W
E MOVED ON
a Tuesday, Dr. Mike's free day. Mam insisted we couldn't move without him. We used a U-Haul truck, and Larry, Pap, Dr. Mike, and I loaded it while Mam directed us.

I kept myself busy, trying, in a way, to make up for what I had said the night before. I acted extra-nice to Pap, even when he dropped my box with the microscope in it that Grandma Mary and Mam had given me for Christmas that past year. My only gift. I had written
FRAGILE
all over the box—not that Pap could read it, but Mam could, and Mam was the one pointing out which box went where and who carried it. Maybe she was getting even with me, having Pap haul my stuff, but I didn't let her see that it bothered me. I just picked up the box and said, "It's okay, Pap," and set it down in the truck.

I didn't speak to Mam except to say, "You want this in the back of the truck?" or "Should we set that box on top of the table?" I was all business to everyone.

Larry brought his radio and set it on the roof of his rusty van and turned it up full blast, drawing neighbors out of their houses to come watch the procession in and out of our front door.

Tim Seeley and Bobbi Polanski stopped by and helped awhile, Bobbi using just her one good arm. I tried to act more cheerful around them, as if I were having as much fun as the others. I didn't pull it off too well, though, and Seeley asked me at one point, "What's wrong with you, anyway?"

When it was time to leave we said our good-byes and Mam walked through the house one last time, dabbing at her tears with a McDonald's napkin left over from that morning's breakfast.

I said good-bye to Seeley. I told him to come visit and that next weekend wouldn't be too soon, and then I went down to the creek for one last good-bye. I stood looking down in the water, watching the minnows darting about in what appeared to be aimless activity, and I wondered if there were some creature larger than us, God maybe, who looked down on us and saw all our comings and goings and thought all our activities were aimless, pointless. I thought about randomness and chaos, my old fears. I thought about the way life was, and death. I thought about Grandma Mary just dropping dead in the middle of her bedroom, in the middle of blow-drying her hair, wearing her slip and panty hose and navy blue pumps. Her skirt and blouse lay on the bed ready for her, but
poof!
she dies before she can get to them. She dies with the blow-dryer in her hand and her hair half-wet and half-dry. She dies right in the middle of living. It made no sense. Life made no sense.

I turned around to leave and found Bobbi standing behind me. I hadn't even heard her.

"Hi," I said, and then added, "bye."

"Yeah, good luck in your new house," she said, shaking her head so her hair fell back behind her shoulders. I had always had the feeling that she did that so people would notice her beautiful hair, and it was beautiful. It was honey colored, like clover honey, and it was long and straight and looked very heavy, as if she had tiny weights hanging from the ends. She liked to swish it and swing it and toss it behind her with her head or hands, whatever got her the best effect.

I looked away, uninterested in her charms. Neither one of us said anything, and then I said, "Well, gotta go."

I passed her and headed for the truck. She said to my back, "You never liked me, did you?"

I stopped walking and turned around. "You never gave me a reason to, Polanski."

"Seeley likes me. You didn't know that, did you? We talk sometimes." She flicked her hair back again and adjusted the sling around her arm.

"I'm not Seeley," I said, catching sight of a bruise on her wrist "So what happened to your arm?"

She laughed. "Fell. What else?"

"I can imagine what else," I said.

Bobbi studied the sling and I saw her expression change, turning inward, shutting down, and I flinched as if I'd heard the echoing slam of a dungeon door. I'd never seen a face change so suddenly. One second she was laughing at herself and the next she was gone—just gone. Then she became all smiles again, her dimples showing—more charm. "My dad
rigged up this sling. Pretty nice, huh? Better than you'd get at the doctor's. Dr. Morris even said it was good work. He said Dad tied it just the right height for my arm."

Someone honked the horn and I looked back toward the house a second, then at Bobbi. "See you—sometime—then," I said, backing away.

She held out her hand for me to shake. "I just wanted us to part friends."

I stopped and crossed my arms in front of me. "Why?"

"Come on, O'Brien, we grew up together, that's all. No ulterior motive."

I leaned forward and shook her hand. It felt cold and dry and firm.

The horn sounded again and she squeezed my hand before we both let go. I stood there for a moment, puzzling over her gesture, but then the horn blasted three more times and I took off.

***

A
T THE NEW
house we discovered that Mrs. Levi had left us a heavy-duty riding mower, which Pap wanted to ride right away. He was supposed to be unpacking all his junk from our old garage into our new one, but he couldn't stop fooling around with the mower.

I got tired of arguing with him and went inside to unload some other boxes, ones without a lot of broken junk in them.

Mam told me to help Larry in the parlor. I didn't know which room she was calling the parlor, so I hunted for Larry and found him in the room with the piano. It was an old upright, taller than I and heavy looking. Mrs. Levi had said it
was a Victorian piano. Someone had painted it a wine color. I went over and played a few notes. It sounded bad, as if I were playing it underwater.

Larry came up behind me and touched some of the lower notes. He had long fingers and the tips of them bent way back when he pressed a key.

"Maybe timing it will help," he said, trying a scale.

"Yeah', maybe." I went over to one of the boxes and ripped the tape off the top.

"You know, I had this thought," Larry said, turning to face me. "We ought to get Pap to try this thing out Who knows, he might turn out to be one of those idiot savants. You know, one of those people who have this one stroke of genius in them and then the rest of them is just—well—Anyway, I saw on TV this guy who could play the piano like Liberace, and he was retarded and blind but he had this one God-given gift, to play the piano. So maybe..."

I threw down the blanket I had pulled out of the box. "What do you think? You think you just discovered retarded or something? You think Pap's some new discovery? Don't you think Grandma Mary tried all those things long ago? He's forty-two years old. Don't you think Pap's already had a million tests? Pap is Pap, okay? You're not going to discover some hidden genius, or some great math skill, or ... or ... artistic ability. Can't you just let Pap be Pap?"

"Can't you?" Larry said, standing with his back to the piano, blinking at me.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, but Larry didn't answer. He turned around and played "Three Blind Mice" with one finger. I went back to unpacking, tossing the
stuff on the floor, and then Larry stopped in the middle of his tune and said, "Sorry, JP, you're right. I've never paid much attention to Pap before. Okay? But I like him." He turned and came over to the box where I stood and pulled out a picture of me, Pap, and Grandma Mary dressed up for my first communion. He studied it.

"I used to kind of pick on Pap," he said, setting the picture down on a side table that wobbled on the uneven floorboards. "Well, 'pick on' maybe isn't the right phrase. I used to like to fool him. Get him to believe things. I told him once that that set you've got, the Mary and Joseph and Jesus, the Nativity, came alive at night when we went to sleep. I told him we could never see it because they waited until everyone was asleep. He believed me."

"'Course he did."

"Okay, I was stupid. Believe me, I've been paid back plenty in my life. Anyway, like I said, I like Pap. I'm not going to hurt him, if that's what you're thinking. I'm not going to give him drugs or anything."

I tossed the emptied box behind me and tore open the next one, happy to have something to rip into. "Did Mam tell you I thought that? Is she telling you everything I say?"

"I lied to you about selling drugs," he said, not answering me. He flipped his hair back off his shoulders and leaned over the box with me. He helped me to dislodge a rolled-up rug set in at an angle, pulling up on his end while I pulled on the other.

"I never sold, I just used, and most of the time I was too poor to even use. I came home because I got tired of living on the streets. I was a failure even at drug abuse."

We dropped the rug on the floor and unrolled it with our feet, kicking and stamping on it to flatten out the edges.

"I'm telling you this to make peace. I need a break, okay? Your mother's giving it to me. I won't mess up."

We both stared down at the rug, a braided coil of blues and browns.

"I need this family," Larry said, pointing his booted foot and smoothing down a section of the rug that had bubbled up.