The Noah Confessions (3 page)

• 5 •

He was still in his work clothes and his arms were crossed. He hadn't even touched his glass of Scotch. He was too busy staring. His ears were red.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked.

“That's not a real question.”

His ears went redder. “Oh, you want a statement? You're grounded until college.”

“You knew I was upset.”

“So that's an appropriate response to being disappointed in your birthday present?”

“It's not just a present. It's a milestone and I missed it. I had to do something for the occasion.”

“Yes, I don't think you're going to forget this occasion. Ms. Gardner called. You got two demerits. Another one and you're suspended.”

“I won't get another one. I'm the good kid. I never get in trouble. Remember?”

He stared at me and his breathing started to slow. He took a sip of Scotch. My hair was dripping on the rug. I sucked the salt water out of the ends.

“What did you do? Go swimming?”

“Surfing,” I said.

“Surfing.”

“Yes, and I got up, which is rare your first time, and I think I might actually be good at it.”

“Surfing. By yourself.”

“With a friend.”

“With a friend and the undertow and the riptides and the sharks.”

“Dad, seriously. Life isn't safe. You can't lock me up.”

“I'm not saying that.”

“But it's why you didn't get me a car.”

He took another sip of Scotch. “Is that what you think?”

“Well, isn't it?”

“No, in fact, it isn't.”

“Then tell me what it's about.”

“I'm not sure you're ready.”

“I'm two years from being an adult. Don't you have a clue? Dad, I love you, but a charm bracelet with birds on it? Really.”

He said, “You just don't know what that bracelet means.”

“Then why don't you tell me?”

“It's important,” he said.

“So tell me.”

Another hit of Scotch and the glass was empty.

“You want to know? Even if it changes your whole perspective?”

“Yes.”

He stared at me for a long time. Then he turned and climbed the stairs and went into his room. I heard him moving around the room for a while and then he came back, carrying a manuscript box. He dropped it on the table and gestured for me to sit down. I did.

He leaned over the box and touched its corners. He stared at it for a long time and when he spoke his voice was softer.

“Lynnie, your childhood is so much different from mine.”

“I know.”

“No, you really don't.”

It was true. I had never asked. I knew they were both from the South. I knew they had met in high school and then again in Los Angeles. I knew I had never seen any of my relatives. Whenever I asked why, they were vague. There had been a misunderstanding. Hard feelings. Grudges. I assumed everyone had disapproved of the marriage and that was where I left it. You don't miss relatives if you've never had them. It's like missing a place you've never visited.

I knew there would come a time when I was curious about my ancestors, but this wasn't it.

“You have a great life, whether you know it or not. Even with losing your mother. You have me, you have friends, you have interests, you have school, and most of all, you have a future. You're going to college. You'll pursue your dreams. Nothing is going to hinder that if I can help it.”

I opened my mouth to respond but he raised a finger.

“I know you think that's true of everyone, but it isn't. Sometimes people are born into problems they didn't create. Bigger problems than not having a car.”

“Dad, I got an A in Global Studies.”

He shook his head. “This is different.”

He stared at the box for a moment, as if it contained gold or dynamite, and then he pushed it toward me.

“Your mother and I discussed this moment. We decided it was for when you were mature enough. Or for when you started to lose perspective. I think both of those things are happening now.”

I took the box and lifted it. It was heavy. Nothing moved inside. It didn't make a noise.

“Open it,” he said.

I lifted the top.

Inside I saw a bulging manila envelope. It was taped shut and nothing was written on it.

“Something you wrote?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, not me.”

I opened the envelope and took out the manuscript. It was typewritten and neatly stacked, though the edges were frayed and yellow.

It was at least a hundred pages, bound by brass brads.

I glanced at the first page. It said: “September 25, 1975.”

“My birthday,” I pointed out.

“A coincidence,” he said, “if you believe in that kind of thing.”

Dear Noah,

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a girl of wealth and taste.

I ripped that off from a song. Ten points if you know which one.

“That's the Rolling Stones,” I said. “‘Sympathy for the Devil.'”

He nodded.

         

I saw you for the first time today when Ms. McKeever introduced you in English class. My name is Catherine Pittman. Call me Cat because everyone does.

I looked at him.

“That's Mom.”

“Yes.”

“But who's Noah?”

“He's the guy who built the ark.”

“No, Dad, really.”

“Just read it.”

“Does Noah realize you have this letter?”

“He knows.”

I looked back down at it. I had that creepy feeling you get when looking at old photographs or relics someone dug up in Egypt. All that time had passed but once it had been a shiny new idea.

I felt nervous. I felt the way I had, earlier with Jen, when I missed a good wave and I was alone in the water and the other waves were going to tumble down on top of me. Here was the voice of my mother, the same age as I was now, sitting in my lap, waiting to tell me something.

“This is too much. I can't read it in one night.”

“Just get started.”

My father kissed me on top of my head.

“Is this a punishment?” I asked him.

“No, Lynnie. This is your gift.” Then he left me alone with it.

• 6 •

I took the manuscript up to my room. I put it on one side of the bed and tried to ignore it. I went online and got my homework assignments. Then I put on my iPod and started to get to work. But the manuscript just sat there beside me, quiet and demanding, like a cat, angling for my attention.

I turned off my iPod and pushed my books to the floor and picked it up.

“Okay, here goes. Happy birthday to me.”

I began to read my mother's voice.

         

It's 1975 and there's an oil shortage and a recession and everyone is really bored with it. Music is pretty good—at least we have the Stones and the Who and Bruce Spring-steen and Eric Clapton and there's always Motown. I wonder if you like any of this stuff or if you're some kind of Yes or Jethro Tull freak. We'd talk about all that if we ever got to meet, but I don't think we will.

There are rumors about why your family has moved here. Your father's CIA or FBI and is only pretending to be a dentist because that's his cover. I mean, if you're a dentist and you could live anywhere, wouldn't you want to live somewhere decent? Union Grade, Virginia, is as far as you can get from anything decent. There are less than two thousand people here and way less than half of them are our age and way less than half of those are interesting.

I know the real reason you're here. That's why I'm writing to you.

I know the real reason because I'm a little bit psychic. Don't laugh. Since I was little, I could hear people's thoughts and feel their feelings. It's not some strange cosmic gift. It's just that in my family, I've had to learn how to read and interpret things other than words and smiles. There is so much going on beneath the surface. I'm what you'd call vigilant.

The more acceptable reason is that I know how to listen to gossip. I hear all the weird stuff and I reject it. I hear the real reason and it just hits home—I know it's true.

Your mother grew up here and she came back to settle some unfinished business. That's what people are saying and they're right. What you'll be surprised to learn is that I'm part of that unfinished business.

I can't go into that right now. First, some history. Mine.

I'm the youngest of three kids. My brother's a Methodist minister in North Carolina. He's married, no kids. My sister is a freshman at William and Mary, majoring in theater. My mother's a housewife. My father runs the carpet factory here in Union Grade. It's the main industry aside from the tire plant and the building supply. He doesn't own it—it's a big corporate monolith based in Tennessee. But he's the manager and that makes him the big man in town. He employs a lot of people, parents of a lot of kids who go to school with us. He's also on the town council and in the Lions Club, and is a deacon in the Methodist church, which we attend regularly.

Are you still awake? Keep going.

The reason I'm writing to you is that I have something to confess.

That's why it's important that we don't get to know each other. As soon as you read this letter it's going to change your life. It's going to change mine. It's way far better if we are strangers when it happens.

What I want to tell you is that I'm a criminal.

No, it's not shoplifting or speeding or taking drugs or buying and selling tests or bootleg records. It's a lot more serious. They send you to prison until you're old or dead.

You're the first person I've ever told and probably the last, unless I decide to go ahead and tell the police and do my time. I'm still thinking of running away. I don't know how it's going to work. I don't know what's going to happen to me if I go through with this. But I have a pretty good idea of what will happen if I don't.

         

I put the manuscript in the box, the top on the box, and the box under my bed. I walked down the hall to my father's bedroom and didn't even knock. He was sitting in his chair next to the fireplace and had just opened one of his precious books about the Civil War or the trade union movement. He didn't even look up at me.

I said, “Let me get this straight. This is a letter from my mother to some boy named Noah, when she was sixteen, wherein she confesses to said strange boy named after the guy in the ark that she's a criminal?”

My father looked to the ceiling. “I think she was fifteen.”

“Hilarious. You see my sides splitting.”

“Just keep reading, Lynne. Rome wasn't built in a day.”

“It's going to take me a hundred typewritten pages to figure out how my mother became a criminal? You're not just going to explain it to me? You don't think it's worth getting right to the point?”

“There's no way to do that,” he said. “If I thought…If she thought…there were another way, she'd have chosen it.”

I waited but he just stared at me.

“Congratulations,” I said. “I've forgotten about the car.”

SIXTEEN
and a Day

• 1 •

I didn't read any more that night. I had a history test the next day and since I had spent most of the first part of the year obsessing about Ms. Kintner's wardrobe (she dressed like Heidi some days, a gypsy or a Portuguese widow on others, and I liked to take bets), I was naturally worried about how I was going to do. Technically I was already grounded until college, even though I was pretty sure my father was using hyperbole to prove a point. Still, I didn't want to throw bad grades into the mix. I studied as much as possible but it wasn't easy, not with the letter sitting under my bed like a bomb.

I didn't sleep much. I tossed and turned and dreamed of waves one minute and guns the next. I saw my mother robbing a bank. I saw myself walking on water. I saw the car that I didn't get going over the side of a cliff with me in it. Then my mother. Then Ms. Kintner. It was an exhausting night and I was relieved when it ended.

My father and I didn't talk about it on the way to school. All he said was “You aren't going to do anything crazy today, are you?”

“If I do, I'll call you.”

“Lynnie.”

“Don't worry.”

But I knew he would.

Everyone was talking about me ditching school. At lunch, younger classmen were pointing and whispering. That's what it was like at Hillsboro. Being a little bad made you a celebrity. Anything more got you kicked out.

“You are so my hero,” Talia said.

“Don't be ridiculous, she could end up in public school,” Zoe said.

“Her father would never let that happen.”

“He went to public school,” I said.

“Yeah, but he won't even let you drive a car.”

“What did he do to you?” Zoe asked.

“He gave me a letter,” I said.

“Oh, that's the worst. Like you want to hear them going on about right and wrong and what happened in their day. I have to go to computer lab.”

“Me too,” Talia said, and they hurried off, still munching on their veggie wraps.

I watched them go and felt like my whole place in the world was leaking away.

I pictured my mother sitting in a cafeteria in a bad public school in the South, writing in her notebook. I wondered if Noah had been near her, if she could see him across the room, if he was cute, if he knew who she was. I wondered about her crime, how soon I would know and if it would change me. Or my feelings for her.

I saw Jen sitting alone in her usual spot. She had her eyes fixed on a surfing magazine while she ate a slice of pizza, folded in half the way a New Yorker does it.

I kicked the grass in front of her to get her attention. She just looked at my shoes and recognized them.

“Hey, Lizard. You did good yesterday. But I can't skip any more for a while. I nearly got caught.”

“I did get caught.”

“You'll get better at it.”

I sat on the ground and said, “Guess what I got for my birthday?”

“I think we went over this. A bracelet. No car. You need to move on.”

“Something else. A letter from my mother.”

“From your dead mother?”

“She wrote it when she was fifteen.”

“To you?”

“Jen, a little circulation in the brain, if it's not too much trouble.”

“You're telling the story,” she said. “I can't help that it's all screwed up.”

“She wrote it to somebody else when she was about my age.”

“Who?”

“A guy named Noah.”

“Is it a love letter?”

“No, it's a…confession.”

“What'd she do?”

“I haven't gotten to that part.”

“It's probably boring. Our parents thought they did all this rad shit but it was totally lame. Marijuana. Oooh. I'm scared.”

“You don't do drugs.”

“Don't need to. I surf. That's my point. Smoking a joint makes you lose your ambition, my father says. I'm like, okay, the wrong break at the wrong time, you're toast.”

“Don't scare me. I'm just getting started.”

“I'm just saying.”

“Can I really read this letter? I mean, do I want to know what she's going to confess?”

Jen pointed to a page in the magazine and said, “Look at that red and yellow Hobie. Sweet.”

“Well, thanks for listening.”

“Everybody's got a past. You're just trying to keep your mom perfect,” she said. “You have that option because she's dead.”

This was hands down the smartest thing I'd ever heard her say.

“So you think I should read it.”

“Look at it this way, Lizard. Moms are supposed to drive you crazy around this age. Why should yours be different?”

I didn't have an answer.

“Wanna hit Sunset around four o'clock?” she asked. “It should glass out around then, this time of year.”

“No, not today.”

I wanted to go home and read.