Reality Check

by Peter Abrahams

  “Um,” he said.

  Clea turned to him. “Come inside.”

  “Huh?” said Cody. He’d been inside only once before, one afternoon not long after they’d started going out, when he’d come to pick Clea up and Fran, Clea’s stepmom, had ushered him in to meet the family, meaning Mr. Weston and the two little stepbrothers. It had taken Mr. Weston what had seemed like twenty seconds to establish where Cody lived, who his father was, and Cody’s future plans, which at that time came down to going to a D-1 college on a football scholarship, and still did.

  “No one’s home,” Clea said. “Fran took the boys to Cowboy Town and my dad won’t be back till late.”

  Cody didn’t move. “He doesn’t like me.”

  “That’s not true,” Clea said. They sat in silence. “He doesn’t even know you,” she added after a while. More silence. A little warm breeze sprang up, flowed through the open windows of Cody’s car, ruffled the red roses in the Westons’ flower beds.

  “Besides,” Clea said, “I like you. I like you plenty.”

  Floral smells came wafting in.

  “Come on,” Clea said, touching his bare shoulder.

  “I don’t have a shirt.”

  “Lots of shirts inside.”

  Cody reached for the door handle.

  14

  They walked around the house until they reached a big glassed-in room the Westons called the conservatory, although Cody had no clue why. “This is never locked,” Clea said. She opened the door and they went inside. The conservatory had a stone floor with a fountain in the center; water splashed from the mouth of a bronze frog. Clea led him to a door, around a corner, past the laundry room, a room almost as big as Cody’s whole apartment.

  “Just a sec,” she said, darting into the laundry room and returning with a perfectly ironed button-down shirt, dark blue with thin white stripes. “Here,” she said, tossing it to him. “Put it on.”

  Just from the feel of it in his hands, Cody knew this shirt was much finer than anything he’d ever worn. He checked the label: ANDREW TOT TEN, LONDON. And a smaller label stitched in gold beside it: MADE TO THE PERSONAL REQUIREMENTS OF WINTHROP

  WESTON. Mr. Weston had his shirts made for him? A nd in London?

  “Go on,” Clea said. “It’s just a shirt. And you can keep it—

  he’ll never notice.”

  Keep Mr. Weston’s shirt? Out of the question. But with the A/C running it was a little chilly in the house—no A/C in the apartment over the Red Pony—so Cody put on Mr. Weston’s shirt, too tight on him through the shoulders, too baggy 15

  everywhere else. Clea tilted her head to one side and studied him.

  “A nice color on you.”

  “Blue?”

  “That shade of blue. Navy blue.” She took his hand—he noticed that she’d left the report card on the ironing board—

  and led him toward a staircase, kind of narrow for such a grand house.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  “The back stairs.”

  They went up the back stairs, shadowy and smelling of old wood and wax—even a bit shabby, almost like it was a small leftover of some other house, not so grand, the kind of house Cody was more used to—and came out in a beautiful broad hallway lined with Persian rugs, the walls hung with paintings of the Old West. Cody knew nothing about art, but he wouldn’t have minded lingering a bit; another time, maybe. This time, something was leading him along, and not just Clea’s hand in his. She opened a door at the end of the hall.

  “Ta-da!” she said.

  Cody had been in only one other girl’s bedroom before this—Tonya Redding’s, almost a year earlier. Tonya lived in Lower Town, a few blocks from the Red Pony, where her mother worked as a waitress. Tonya’s bedroom was kind of 16

  girly, with pink walls, dolls on the shelf, stuffed animals on the bed; despite everything, he’d wanted out of there pretty fast. Clea’s bedroom was different: much bigger, of course, and beautiful, with a bank of windows on one side and French doors on another, but there was nothing girly about it. The walls were white, decorated with framed black-and-white photos of Clea on her horse, Bud; there were two bookcases, one filled with books, the other with trophies; the furniture was dark and spare. Clea’s riding boots stood by the bed—a queensize bed or even bigger, but it had plenty of space—and her riding helmet lay on the comforter, a comforter that looked like it might be made of silk.

  Cody opened the French doors, stepped out onto a balcony. Below lay more gardens, the swimming pool, an acre or two of lawn, a barn, a corral, and Bud standing stock-still by a water trough, his white diamond-shaped blaze visible even at this distance. A perfect sight, very like a photograph, this one in color. Cody had a funny feeling, as though time had stopped for a moment. Then he felt Clea’s hand on his back. He turned. She put her arms around him and they kissed. Clea liked to keep her eyes open when they kissed, and wanted his open, too. That had taken getting used to, the intensity close to painful. Clea had light-colored eyes, closer to green than anything else—a little surprising what with her hair being so 17

  dark, almost black—and during these kisses he seemed to sink beneath the green, down into something good and pure and giving that at all costs must not be harmed.

  They went back inside and lay on the bed. Time grew erratic again, not stopping now, but instead becoming elastic, stretching and contracting, speeding up or slowing down, all depending on what was happening in Clea’s bedroom. Cody sank into green waters, and knew without a word being spoken that something similar was going on with her. And there, so deep down, almost oblivious to anything else, he barely—just barely—heard Bud neighing in the corral. Some little corner of his mind grew preoccupied with the sound, worried at it, and all at once, Cody realized he’d missed something else, sensed but not absorbed: a faint crunch, the kind of sound a tire makes on a gravel driveway.

  He sat up.

  “What?” said Clea. “What’s wrong?”

  “Someone’s coming.”

  “Impossible.”

  But she believed him and sat up too, holding the comforter—yes, silk—to her chest, all the way up to her chin. Cody started throwing on clothes and Clea did the same. It could have been funny, this repetitive dressing in hurry-up mode, but it was not. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, again fully 18

  dressed, again slipping into her sandals, and Cody was standing by the French doors, sweatpants on, barefoot, fumbling with the buttons—there seemed to be way too many—on Mr. Weston’s hand-tailored navy blue shirt with the thin stripes, when the door burst open and Mr. Weston himself strode in.

  “Daddy? What are you—”

  Mr. Weston made a chopping motion with his hand, a hand that held—Cody saw at that moment—the report card, and Clea went silent, her own hand frozen on a sandal strap. The room suddenly seemed much too small, and not because Mr. Weston was especially big. Mr. Weston was no taller than Cody—

  about six feet—and, while twenty or thirty pounds heavier, no more powerfully built. He had thinning reddish hair and a broad freckled face that had a funny way of looking warm and friendly from just below the eyes to the tip of the chin, like a smile could flash out at any second, but at this moment showed not a millimeter of friendliness. His gaze went to Cody’s hands, still fumbling with the buttons, and then down to his bare feet. Nothing wrong with Cody’s feet—strong, broad feet, size ten and a half—but now all he wanted to do was to somehow cover them up.

  Mr. Weston’s eyes—similar in color to Clea’s but in no other way—rose slowly up to Cody’s face. Did he notice that Cody was wearing his shirt? No way to tell.

  19

  “That your car in the drive?” he said, not furious, not even loud, but Cody’s spine felt icy just the same. “I asked you a question,” Mr. Weston said after a moment or two of silence. Was it a serious question? Mr. Weston had seen Cody’s car before, and besides, who else’s could it be, an old banger like that in the Westons’ ci
rcular driveway? “Yeah,” Cody said, trying to look Mr. Weston in the eye, forcing himself to meet that gaze; and in it he saw, or thought he saw, that Mr. Weston didn’t hate him, not exactly. It was more that he, Cody, wasn’t important enough to merit Mr. Weston’s hatred. Cody felt something catch fire inside him, a hot feeling that had come to him only once in his life, a few years before, the night his father punched him in the mouth.

  “Look, Mr. Weston,” Cody began, trying to keep the anger out of his tone, and maybe not succeeding very well, “Clea didn’t do anything wrong. We were only—”

  Mr. Weston held up his hand, the one with the report card. It shook. “I’m not interested in hearing from you on that subject, or any other, for that matter.”

  “Daddy!” Clea said.

  Mr. Weston kept on, as though she hadn’t spoken at all. “I’ll let you find your own way out,” he said.

  The meaning of that didn’t penetrate at once. Then it did. Was there any choice? Not that Cody could think of. He turned 20

  to Clea, still sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes wide, one sandal on, one sandal off. What to tell her? He couldn’t come up with that, either. He just stood there, mouth open, turning red.

  Clea rose, took his hand. “Go,” she said. “I’ll call you.” She leaned forward, kissed him on the cheek.

  Cody nodded. He turned, walked past Mr. Weston—now his mouth was open too—and out of Clea’s room. The door closed behind him. He went down the hall but couldn’t find the back stairs. Cody went the other way, trying one room and then another. It took him five minutes or maybe more to get out of the house, and by that time he was pouring sweat. He ripped off the hand-tailored navy blue shirt with the narrow stripes, flung it away, jumped into his car, and sped off, spraying gravel behind him and grazing a stone gatepost topped by a lion’s head at the end of the driveway.

  Cody was back at the apartment over the Red Pony, pacing around its small spaces, when Clea called. He could tell right away she’d been crying.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “You? You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” Then Cody had a horrible thought. “Did he hit you?”

  Clea sounded confused. “Hit me? Who?”

  21

  “Your father, of course.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “That could never happen.”

  “Good,” he said. “Good. And I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry for getting you in trouble and everything.”

  She laughed, a sad little laugh. “It’s not really you,” she said. “More the B, like I told you.”

  “The B?” What was she talking about?

  “In calc, for Christ sake,” she said.

  There was a silence.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right. I’m slow sometimes.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Another silence.

  “It’s so unreal,” she said.

  “What?” said Cody. “What happened?”

  “My father is . . .” Her voice rose in anger. Clea had a temper, although it rarely showed, and Cody didn’t mind when it did.

  “Tell me,” he said, “whatever it is.”

  She took a deep breath. It tickled his ear, like she was right there with him. “He’s sending me to live with his brother,” she said. “For the whole fucking summer.”

  Mr. Weston’s brother? Wasn’t he the one in Fort Collins? Not a terrible drive. “I’ll be spending a lot on gas,” he said. 22

  “Huh?” Clea said.

  “Your uncle—isn’t he the Toyota dealer in Fort Collins?”

  “That’s Fran’s brother,” Clea said. “My dad’s brother is an investment banker in Hong Kong.”

  Hong Kong?

  “I leave tomorrow.”

  23

  CLEA CALLED TWO DAYS LATER. “This is me,” she said. “Saying hi from tomorrow.”

  “Huh?” said Cody.

  “It’s already tomorrow here.”

  “In Hong Kong?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Weird. There’s this restaurant where they serve snakes.”

  “You ate snakes?”

  “Mmmm, good.”

  “Really?”

  “Actually not bad. The restaurant was kind of amazing.”

  “Better than Golden Treasure?” Cody said. Golden Treasure was the only Chinese restaurant in Little Bend, and the only Chinese restaurant Cody had ever been to. Lots of people wouldn’t go there on account of how dirty the kitchen was supposed to be, but Cody liked the pineapple chicken balls. Clea laughed. The connection was good, and he could hear every little—nuance? was that the word?—in the sound. “Just a bit,” she said.

  Then came a pause, and in the background Cody heard a man speaking Chinese. “So,” he said, “we can call and everything.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I got an international cell phone. Maybe I better call you, because . . . well, and also we can email and IM—that’s free.”

  “Sure,” said Cody. “Cool.”

  “How are things there?”

  “You know. Good. Sunny.”

  “Sunny here, too.”

  “It’s like, on the ocean, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s an island, and my uncle’s condo’s on the penthouse floor of this huge tower. On one side we can see all these boats, and on the other there’s China.”

  “Wow,” Cody said. “Hey, guess what.”

  “What?”

  25

  “I got a job.”

  “Yeah?”

  A good job—first of all, not landscaping with his father; second, it paid $10.75 an hour, not bad. But all of a sudden he wished he hadn’t brought it up.

  “What’s the job?” Clea said.

  “Uh, it’s not that interesting.”

  Another pause. “Working with your dad?”

  “No,” Cody said. “Not that. This—” He stopped, hearing more talk in the background, this time in English.

  “Cody? I’ve got to go. Talk to you soon.”

  “No problem,” Cody said. And then, just popping out, very uncool, came: “Where you going?”

  “On a cruise.”

  “A cruise?”

  “Just in the harbor,” Clea said. “To see how it all looks from there.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cody said. “Well, later.”

  “Later.”

  Click.

  Cody sat on a stool at the kitchen counter and switched on the computer—a five-year-old PC with a dial-up connection—

  and clicked on a link for Hong Kong pictures. The first one was still loading—bright blue bands descending from the top 26

  of the frame, and then what might have been the top of a green mountain—when the door opened and his father came in. Cody looked up. “Hey,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said his father, setting a case of twenty-four on the counter. His hands—big and gnarled—were dirty, and he wore an old T-shirt with “Laredo Tree Specialists” on the front, meaning he’d been working. But not tree work: Laredo Tree Specialists—a side business back when they’d owned the Red Pony—no longer existed, had folded two or three years after Cody’s mom died of cancer. Now his father mostly just mowed lawns, clipped hedges, weeded gardens; in winter he stuck a blade on his pickup and plowed for the county.

  Cody’s father ripped open the case, grabbed a can, snapped down the tab, took a big swallow. His gaze slid over to the computer screen. “What’s that?” he said.

  “Hong Kong.” The frame was almost complete: mountain, almost covered with high-rises, big blue harbor, lots of boats, even a few Chinese junks. What Cody wanted to do now was examine it carefully, by himself, no distractions. His father had another hit, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What’s so special about Hong Kong?”

  Cody shrugged.

  “Then why’re you wastin’ your time lookin’ at the pictures?”

  27

  Cody clicked on shut do
wn. The screen went dark.

  “Didn’t say you had to do that. It’s your time to waste.”

  Cody got up, moved away toward the window. Down on the street, Tonya Redding was dropping her mom off for a shift at the Red Pony. Mrs. Redding walked toward the service entrance, putting on lipstick. Tonya glanced up, right at Cody’s window, and drove off.

  “I got a job,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” his father said. “What’s it pay?”

  “Ten seventy-five an hour.” The summer before, his father had paid him $8.50.

  His father tilted back his head, drained what was left of the can, tossed it in the trash. “Doin’ what?”

  “Working deliveries for the lumber yard.”

  “Beezon Lumber?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Driving?”

  Cody shook his head. “Riding shotgun. Loading and unloading.”

  His father reached for another can. “How’d you get a job like that?”

  “Just went down there and filled out a form.”

  Another can got snapped open. Cody was highly attuned to that sound; it even caused a physical reaction, a cold feeling at 28

  the back of his neck. “Just filled out a form,” his father said. He went over to the couch, switched on the TV.

  “Yeah,” said Cody, although it hadn’t been quite that simple. He’d filled out a form, all right, but then Mr. Beezon had asked to see him, and he’d gone to the upstairs office, where Mr. Beezon, a tiny old guy with a big nose and hair growing out of his ears, had talked Rattlers football for five or ten minutes—

  Rattlers being the name of all the County High teams—and then offered him the job on the spot.

  “Work hard and there might even be a raise in it for you,”

  he’d said.

  “Thanks, Mr. Beezon.”

  “And overtime, too, if this goddamn economy picks up.”

  Cody hadn’t known what to say to that.

  “Know what our problem is, Cody?” Mr. Beezon had said, leaning across the desk. His teeth were the same yellow color as the dinosaur fossil bones in the display room at the back of the Little Bend Public Library.