But it never satisfied the urge; he had to see her in the flesh. And it never soothed the worry inside him when she played her little games, and vanished for days at a time without a phone call.
He could hear the water slush inside his shoes as he rounded the corner and turned left onto Adam Street, where Julia lived. He imagined her face once again, the surprised look she’d give him when she opened the door. It was late, but he knew she wouldn’t mind.
His chest throbbed when he got to her dirt driveway and noticed there were no cars parked outside the house, though the living room lights glowed yellow through the drawn curtains. He decided to go around back, where the washer and dryer were squeezed into a small room with a concrete floor. He knocked loudly and pressed his ear to the door. Moments later he heard footfalls, and the back door was pulled open. The washroom light flooded David’s eyes, and he shielded them for a moment. Julia was in her pajamas, peering out in disbelief. She stood squarely in the doorway.
“My God, David, what are you doing?”
He pushed his wet hair away from his face. “I had to see you. Why haven’t you called me?”
Julia craned her neck to look outside, glancing up at the sky. “It’s pouring, David. You’re soaked.” She pulled him into the house, just far enough to shelter him from the rain. “You didn’t take an umbrella?”
David wrapped his trembling hands around her waist. She pulled away slightly. He noticed. “The umbrella was not originally intended for rain,” he said. “It was invented for shade from the Egyptian sun.”
“Why did you come out here? What’s the matter?” Julia reached behind her and grabbed a towel, handing it to him. He paused as he took it, as though awaiting a response from her about the umbrella. Who else in school would ever think to tell her that?
“I wanted to see you,” he eventually muttered. “My artwork was driving me up the wall, and . . . and I felt like such an idiot about today.”
Julia cast her eyes downward. “I felt bad,” she whispered to him.
David could no longer feel his knees, and he lowered his head to smell her hair. He inhaled deeply before she stepped back.
“My parents are going to be home soon,” she said.
“Is that why you’re not letting me in?” David’s face was firm. Julia looked at the floor again. It was a nervous gesture, and David sensed it and tried to change the subject. “In many ancient Arab nations it was customary for a host to pour melted butter over a guest’s head.”
Julia glanced up at his hair, matted down from the rain. He looked at the towel in his hands. “I get crazy over little things,” he added. “Everything to me is like a hint of some horrible thing that’s about to happen.”
“Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Right? Nothing bad’s going to happen.” He started to laugh a little.
“Nothing.” Julia exhaled. Seemed to feel nervous again.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Julia,” David whispered. “You stuck by me through all that crap last year.”
Indeed, she had been the only one who defended him, when he got the whole town into an uproar over a mural he had painted on the side of Tony’s Pizzeria, just a few miles down from Nino’s on Turnbull Road. Tony, the owner, had asked him to “paint something nice” for his customers, and David decided to paint paradise—American marines shaking hands with Soviet soldiers. Their weapons discarded at their feet. Russian and American children were sitting on the ground, playing. A turbaned little boy holding a lit match stretched on his tiptoes, reaching for the outer edge of the American flag. The flag was beginning to catch fire. Tony didn’t seem to mind.
“It’s like soon there’s going to be no more countries and flags,” Tony had said. “John Lennon. ‘Imagine.’ I dig it.” David had been shocked at Tony’s interpretive skills, though he didn’t like the incredulous looks the guy had given him, or the way he’d asked if David could paint the shaking hands a little more accurately. The hands looked fine to David, who’d clenched his jaw and folded his arms across his chest. Tony had dropped the subject after that and walked away with a satisfied nod.
But his customers sent notices to the store, and it wasn’t long before a letter appeared in the Turnbull Times calling the mural anti-American and demanding a boycott. What most burned in David’s mind were phrases like “badly rendered,” “ill-proportioned,” “amateurish.” For weeks he’d tried to start new projects, but those words, those words. They made his hands tremble.
Eventually Tony noticed his registers getting lighter with each passing night, and finally he went out with a bucket of white paint to cover the mural.
The Turnbull Times printed letters claiming the boycott had been a success. They thanked Tony for coming to his senses. David still got dirty looks wherever he went. Even his two buddies, Matthew and Nick, kept their distance for a while. Soon enough it all blew over. The town went back to normal. Julia had gotten into some arguments with schoolmates. She called them all a bunch of conformists. They ignored her. By then, the painting had been covered over. The school halls quieted again. Except the whole school thought Julia was crazy for defending David.
Now Julia heard the neighbor’s dog bark and a car door slam. Then another car door slammed. Julia whirled around in a panic.
“Oh crap, oh crap! My parents are home!” she exclaimed, nudging David out the door.
“Good, I want to meet your dad.”
“Are you nuts? You can’t stay here.” Julia kept shoving.
“Why can’t I meet him?” David protested, trying to fend off her pushing. She shoved harder, and began to panic.
“I told you, I’m not even supposed to date. If I have a guy in the house, they’ll both kill me. Go!” She pressed against him once more and pulled the back door open with her free hand. David backed outside. The rain had slowed to a drizzle.
“Come on, Julia, how can we ever be free?” He leaned in to kiss her. All he got was a hand on his face, and it shoved him backward out of the house. He looked at her, startled, then heard Julia’s father call out her name.
“When will I see you again?”
“I don’t know, just go!” she whispered. She waved him away and closed the back door, locking it.
David stared at the door for a few moments. Then, still clutching the towel she had given him, he slipped along the side of the house, crossed over into the shadows of the trees that lined the property, and stepped out onto the shoulder of Adam Street. He looked at the soft yellow lights glowing behind Julia’s front curtains. Then he scowled and turned away.
The walk home was long. David took slower steps down Turnbull Road. The rain had stopped. It had washed all the cars and the street signs. The streets glistened under the lights. Everything around him was refreshed. He stalked the mile and a half back to Lincoln Avenue recalling her words.
How did she tell me to go home? he asked himself. What was her tone? She was concerned, wasn’t she? Yes, she was scared. Afraid of her father. Everything she does, he questions. He’s a maniac, that father of hers. And she was only trying to protect me from him. That was sweet. That’s the Julia I’m in love with. She said, You can’t stay here, as if the police were after me. She was only worried. There was only worry in that sweet, sweet voice of hers.
He crossed the street to avoid a large puddle that had flooded the shoulder of Turnbull Road.
Still, she could have faced her father, he thought. Maybe she’d call and explain it all when he got home. Knowing her, that’s what she’d do. He realized he probably wouldn’t be home in time when she called, but his mother would come in and tell him that she had. They’d settle the whole thing out, he imagined. He’d tell her exactly what he thought—that her father was ruining their life. They’d laugh and agree. They’d run away from Turnbull. Return when he was a major artist doing an interview for The Dick Cavett Show, when they eventually came to their senses and put the show back on, like his father always railed about.
A car whizzed by and honked. David looked up.
Here I am, bastards, he thought, glaring at the fading tail lights. Come back and look at me. Here’s David Westwood. Poor, crazy maniac, David Westwood. The artist who’s getting out of this grimy, shitty little town. Turn the car around. Fight me if you want, I don’t care. I’ll bash and crush and smash and recreate this whole goddamn world. I’m going to get the best of you all . . . you sons of bitches.
He stalked past Nino’s Deli, and on down to Lincoln Avenue, entertaining himself with thoughts of fame and wealth, and adoration, and the opportunity he’d eventually get to seize his enemies and ruin them. He interviewed himself, and answered his questions as if he were talking to Cavett. He jumped over puddles, and wandered around them. His hair was almost completely dry, but his clothes were still soaked. The towel hung over his shoulders and he occasionally put the end to his nose and breathed in the smell of Julia’s house. He thought he detected traces of her perfume. David considered knocking on Mr. Hopkins’s window. He lived across the street and was always good for small conversations about history or literature. But would he know anything about a young girl’s mind? Would he be able to testify as to how it works? Was he even awake? Would he be alarmed? The questions drove David back toward his home.
He entered the house through the open garage door. He’d stopped dripping, but his clothes stuck to his body and sagged at his feet as he brushed past the easel and opened the door to the main house. His mother was watching Nightwatch; he could hear Charlie Rose talking about the homeless or something. He wandered down the hall and stopped at the entrance to the living room. There his mother sat. She was so engrossed in the television, she didn’t look back to see him standing behind her. Her mouth was slightly open. David slid the towel off his shoulders and rubbed his hair with it balled up in his fist. The show went to a commercial.
“Anyone call for me?” he asked his mother.
She picked her head up, startled, and glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t notice he was wet, and she looked back at the television. “No,” she said, shaking her head.
David turned away. Back toward the other end of the hall, as if protecting his face from an explosion. He winced as though a sharp pain had sliced through his body.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JAMES’S BEDROOM WINDOW FACED EAST, so in the early morning, when the sun blazed, rising toward its noon peak, rays poured into his room more loudly than any alarm clock. He kicked the sheet off and shielded his eyes. His first thought was of his neck, and the fight he’d been in the day before. His second thought was of his father, visiting in the middle of the night. He sat up and reached for his neck. The pain was gone, though the bruise was probably still there. He stretched and felt good. Poking at his neck with an index finger, he felt nothing. He’d slept so deeply, he didn’t remember any of his dreams. He glanced at the wire man that sat on his dresser. He pulled on yesterday’s play clothes and headed upstairs, where he could hear the faint mumbling of his father at the breakfast table.
“I think I might like to get another horse,” he heard his father say as he climbed the stairs. His mother said something inaudible. James appeared in the archway of the kitchen, and saw his father sitting before an open newspaper. His mother stood with her back turned, working at the kitchen counter. Ivan’s eyes lit up.
“And in this corner,” he announced, “weighing in at . . . Jesus, what are you weighing these days, Jimmy?”
James’s mother turned around and told Ivan not to make light of it. She gave Ivan a light slap on the back of the head. He smiled up at Janet, and sipped his coffee. Janet rushed to inspect her son’s bruise.
“It must hurt like hell today,” she said.
“No. It doesn’t hurt one bit. See?” James poked the spot with his fingers. He saw his father nod to him knowingly. James turned his attention back to his mother.
“That’s amazing,” Janet said. “That kind of a bruise, you should be lucky to be walking around. Sit down, I’ll get you some milk.”
James sat across from Ivan, who was reading the sports section, one hand on his coffee mug.
“I’m going with Divine Mr. Smith,” Ivan said after a long silence. He looked up from his paper at his son. James nodded. He always liked watching his father pick the winners at Belmont. He would get up every morning and make his predictions over breakfast, using a crude, mistrustful system. He believed most races were fixed and the winners were picked following some numeric pattern in which they appeared in the newspaper. Sometimes he chose on a hunch, but whenever he did that, it was always off a thirty-to-one shot. Ivan wanted to practice making predictions first, and see how he fared, before he actually bet money at the track. He always felt he had a calling for gambling, but never bet a dime.
“You think he’ll win?” James asked.
“I have my reasons,” Ivan said. “He’s listed last here. It’s a psychological thing, you know—you list a thing last and nobody pays any attention to it.”
“When you see Mr. Darwin today, you apologize for that fight you were in yesterday,” Janet said over her shoulder. “The last thing we need is him thinking his son’s friend is a troublemaker.”
Ivan slapped his coffee down on the table with a loud clap and twisted his body around. “Apologize? And what about his own son—the little darling?”
James’s mother put an empty glass in front of him and reached for the refrigerator door beside him. “His son is no concern to us.”
“The hell he isn’t.”
“Will you let me discipline my child, Ivan?”
“Fine, but I think you’re crazy to give that bastard the satisfaction. What’s he going to say to the man anyway? I’m sorry your son started a fight and it nearly cost me my whole head?”
“Ivan, go somewhere. Just go.”
“I’ll go somewhere eventually. But I think it’s ridiculous. The missionary’s son gets a free pass?” He looked back down at his paper.
“At the very least, the missionary’s son is getting some instruction from his father,” Janet snapped. After pouring milk into her son’s glass, she sat down at the small chair beside him. The wooden chair creaked and strained under her weight. “Mr. Darwin’s faith teaches that it’s important to be peaceful even when someone else starts the fight.”
“Don’t listen to him, son,” Ivan intercepted.
“It’ll keep you out of a lot of trouble in life,” Janet continued. “I used to be a pretty devout Christian back before you were born.”
Ivan breathed a heavy sigh, then went back to reading his paper.
“Mr. Darwin says that if you live by the sword, then that’s how you’ll die,” added James. “Like if you shoot someone, you’ll get shot. Like that.”
Janet nodded. “I remember once he said that if more people loved each other, we wouldn’t have so much war and hatred. There’s going to be a time when God takes over again and he’s going to get rid of all the people who make the world such a bad place.” She took James’s glass after he was finished and brought it to the sink. “He says we were supposed to live forever.”
“Fool’s Paradise,” Ivan blurted.
She looked down at him, and gave him a light smack on the head. “He happens to believe in something.”
Ivan looked startled. “I’m talking about the horse, for Christ’s sake. Fool’s Paradise is going to come in eighteen-to-one.”
Kevin appeared in the doorway and yawned a good morning as he poured himself a cup of coffee. James often wondered why his brother always grabbed what he wanted from the kitchen and then went back to lock himself in his room.
“Kevin, why don’t you go to church?” Janet asked.
Kevin looked around at everyone in the room. “Why don’t you go to church?” he replied.
His mother was silent, and stayed so after Kevin left. Ivan finished his paper and slapped it down on the table. He looked at Janet, who was lost in thought somewhere. Then he stared at his boy and, as i
f reminded of something he’d almost forgotten, shook his head.
“Apologize,” he said, and sniffed.
CHAPTER NINE
JAMES DARTED ACROSS THE STREET to Dallas’s house, leaped up the front porch, and hit the doorbell. He squinted in the early, wet sunlight as he peered across the street and watched the face of his own house. It looked peaceful from where he stood. Like all the other houses on River Drive. He heard the door open. Mr. Darwin was standing there, holding the screen door and leaning against the frame. He immediately caught sight of the bruise on James’s neck and stood sternly over him.
“Come in, James. You get that thing on your neck from the fight yesterday?”
James stepped into the house, nodding and looking at the floor. He could feel Mr. Darwin shaking his head as he walked past him.
“You and Dallas have reaped what you sowed. Your violence has begot violence. Dallas is downstairs.”
James couldn’t get to the basement door fast enough. Mr. Darwin followed him there. “You two better behave yourselves today,” he warned.
At the bottom of the stairs, James caught a glimpse of Dallas’s bobbing head as he dug through a massive pile of clothes. The Darwins kept their washer and dryer in the basement, but more often than not, that was where the clothes would stay after they’d been washed. It was Dallas’s morning ritual to rummage through the heap of shirts, skirts, socks, and towels to find his play clothes. He arose from the bottom of the pile holding a pair of green shorts. He wore a triumphant smile, and was startled by James standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Jimmy, gimme a second.” Dallas ducked behind the dryer and pulled on his shorts. He had no shirt on, and under the basement lights his skinny body looked like a tight wrap of bones and shadows. Dallas emerged from behind the dryer and started rooting around in the pile for a shirt.
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