“How’s Jesse?”
“Did Mom tell you to ask me that?” I was immediately suspicious.
“Nah. So how is he?”
“He blew up in art class. He started shouting at me and he threw things.”
“Mm.” Felix ran his hands through the thyme, kind of fluffing it and thinking.
“Lily says he has post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“You bet he does. And how does Lily know so much?”
“Her mom’s a psychologist.”
“Mm,” he said again.
“So what do I do now?”
“Take it easy. Give him space. Does he see a shrink?”
“I think so. He said something about it.”
Felix nodded. “That’s usually good. You get prime nightmares being zipped up in a body bag while you’re still alive, I bet.”
“They do that?”
“Standard procedure now. They found out they can keep ’em alive longer if they don’t lose body heat. They call ’em ‘hot pockets,’ but they’re body bags and everyone knows it. Like taking a nap in your own coffin. If you don’t make it, they just zip it up the rest of the way.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Medically speaking, it’s a good procedure. It’s a shame we didn’t think of it in Nam.”
“How do you know about it?”
“I pay attention. You want to know what happens after they’re taken off the battlefield?”
“Are you okay to talk about it?” I asked.
“Yeah. I was never around for that part of it. Half the time I didn’t know whether the guys I sent on made it or not. Sometimes you’d hear on the radio.” He started to stare off into the distance again, and then he snapped his head around and looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah. I do want to know.” I thought I did. I was pretty sure I did.
“So, once the medevac chopper picks one up, they’ll take him to the hospital in Kandahar. Or her, these days. They’ll do CPR on the way if there isn’t any pulse. No flight medic wants a kid to die in his chopper. One guy told me that if they die in your chopper, they hang around.”
“Hang around?”
“Yeah. And a chopper isn’t very big.”
I thought about being haunted by soldiers you’d tried to save. Like Felix’s dreams, only while you’re awake.
“The ones that make it, they’ll fly them to Germany, and maybe their folks will come over. But they won’t remember it, not if they’re badly hurt. They dope ’em up pretty well. Lots of them don’t really wake up till they’re at Walter Reed in Washington. Then they find out what’s missing.”
I tried to imagine waking up one morning and discovering I had no left leg. Jesse’s parents flew out to Germany, and then back to Washington with him. Mom told me. His mom stayed there in Washington until he came home.
“When they send them home,” Felix said, “there’s rehab, and sometimes they have to go back in. There’s a complication that happens to amputees. The bone that’s left grows all over, into the rest of their leg, into the places where the flesh got damaged. It’s supposed to be rare, but it happens to battle amputees all the time.”
That sounded almost creepier than anything else.
“Your friend dodged that one, it looks like.”
“So how do I talk to him now?”
Felix chuckled. “Carefully?”
“I thought I was. I mean, I have no idea why he blew up. It made me feel awful.”
“What started it?”
“I had a stop-the-war sticker on my binder. He said I was clueless. And the VFW was clueless.”
“Oh. Well, most of us know that one. If you say the war’s all wrong, you’re saying your buds died for nothing. If you say it’s all cool, you have to not notice a lot.”
“That would be hard. But I get to have opinions, don’t I?” I felt kind of resentful. I know I’ve had it easy, and Jesse went through stuff I can’t even imagine, but I don’t take well to being told to suppress my opinions.
“Sure,” Felix said. He ruffled my hair, just a kindly old saint in his fake Mission garden. “It wasn’t about you, kiddo, not really.”
I tried to keep that in mind when Lily and I went to take Jesse’s art portfolio back in the afternoon. Since he hadn’t been to school for a week, I was afraid he wasn’t coming back. I really missed him, and I had this awful image of him in his bedroom, drawing mazes on the walls.
His mother opened the door when we rang the bell.
“Uh. We have Jesse’s art portfolio,” I said when she didn’t say anything. “We thought maybe he’d want it.”
She looked hopeful at that, like she really, really hoped he would. “Come in, girls.” She left us in the living room and we heard her feet pattering down the hall and a tap on his door. We couldn’t hear what he said, but after a minute he came out, kind of blinking like he’d been in a cave. He was wearing shorts, and I could tell Lily was trying not to look at the leg. His hair looked like he hadn’t combed it, and his shirt like he’d slept in it. I bet he had.
“Hi!” I said brightly, feeling like Miss Congeniality. I held out the portfolio.
“Oh.” Jesse looked at it for a few seconds as if it might not be his. Then he took it and he smiled at me. “Thank you.”
“We, uh, thought you might want it.”
“Yeah. Have I missed much?” Now he was sounding like somebody who has just been out with a cold.
“Uh. Not much. We’re supposed to finish our self-portraits.”
“Portrait of the artist as a young headcase.”
Jesse’s mother looked like she was about to cry.
“You could do that. Sure,” I said, because I was getting annoyed with him. I’ll never make a good nurse.
Then he smiled at me again. He really has the sweetest smile. “I’m sorry I was an asshole. I’ll turn it in on Monday.”
Jesse’s self-portrait was a face surrounded by mazes—no big surprise—but at least he actually showed up at school. If it had been any of the rest of us, Mr. Petrillo would have got on our cases for being trite and self-indulgent, but he didn’t say anything like that to Jesse. Everybody is extremely nervous about Jesse right now. But Jesse just smiled at me and flicked my hair after Mr. Petrillo went to look at other people’s portraits.
“Hey, Duchess. Thanks for dragging me out of my cave. It means a lot to me that you’d do that.” He sort of patted my head and tugged on a curl.
“Sure.”
“Can I buy you a coffee after school? I have something for you.”
I wondered what it was all afternoon, until after class we walked down to the coffee bar and Jesse pulled a folder out of his bookbag. There was a picture of the Duchess of Alba inside, a big print on nice paper. It wasn’t the one I’d seen online, but I recognized her right away.
The barista called his name and he set two cups down on the table while I looked at the picture. I could tell Jesse was watching me to see what I thought.
In this one, the Duchess has on a white dress and a red sash and a red bow in her hair. Her little white dog has a red bow too. Her black hair is even wilder than in the other picture, curly and all over the place. She’s not exactly pretty, but I wouldn’t mind anybody thinking I look like her. I’ve taped her up on my wall.
“This one is known as the White Duchess,” Jesse explained. “Goya painted her a lot. She was his mistress, I think.”
“Aha. Backstory.” I laughed. “Thank you.” I set it with my bookbag, away from the coffee.
“My little sister said she looks like a fairy duchess and wanted to draw wings on her. She thought you’d like that. She’s pretty much convinced that everybody’s improved by wings.”
I said, “I wanted to be a horse when I was that age.”
“You make a better girl.” Jesse smiled at me.
“So what did you play when you were little?” I asked him. “Batman, like your brother?”
His mouth kind of tightened for
a second. “G.I. Joe.”
Oops.
Then he brushed my hand. “It’s okay. I’m not going to go off on you. I feel really bad about that. I’ve been afraid you wouldn’t like me anymore.”
I shook my head. Maybe after what he’s been through, he’s earned the right to go off on people once in a while. “I was probably clueless,” I said.
“No, you’re the smartest person I’ve met in a long time. Just being with you makes me calm down. That’s what my shrink says I need—to be around someone who takes me as I am, and then I won’t feel like I need to be that way so much.”
I drank my cappuccino and did not poke my finger in the foam. “I’m trying to untangle that,” I said, but I knew what he meant.
“You make me feel calm,” Jesse said. “I’ll think about you when all the rug rats are shrieking and shooting off ray guns at Thanksgiving and I want to dive under the table.”
“Family fun.” I thought about my own family, which has no little kids, just two adults acting like it, and we both laughed. I like Jesse a lot.
And his talking about Thanksgiving gave me an absolutely brilliant idea, which I started work on the minute I got home. Thanksgiving is next week, and if there is any time that Mom is a sucker for family and sentiment, it’s Thanksgiving. She has this weird Norman Rockwell picture of a big family gathered around the turkey, saying grace and being grateful to each other. She also has a habit of bringing home French teachers whose wives have just left them, and church ladies who have lost most of their marbles and are liable to set things on fire if they cook turkey.
“Absolutely not!” she said when I made my pitch.
I tucked the phone under my ear and practiced looking sincere in the mirror. “Mom, it’s Thanksgiving. I can’t stand the idea of having to pick one of you to have Thanksgiving with.” I let my voice quaver a bit, which wasn’t hard, because I really was about to cry. I miss Mom like anything, even if I won’t tell her that.
“Oh, Angie.” I could hear her sniffle. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea for me to come to Ben’s …”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “We’ll come to Wuffie’s. I’ve already asked Ben and Grandma Alice. There’s more room there for a big dinner, anyway.” In the past we’ve always gone to Wuffie’s; Mom has never actually cooked the turkey herself (except for the year I was six and we lived in Venice—California, not Italy—and the guy she was seeing sliced his thumb carving it and we all went to the emergency room).
“It’ll be good for Grandma Alice to have some company,” I added. Mom likes Grandma Alice. “And Wuffie and Grandpa Joe will like to see us. And maybe we could ask Felix—I bet he doesn’t have anyplace else to go. It’ll be easier for you and Ben if there’s someone else there, I bet.” That was my secret ploy. Mom likes to do the gathering-in-the-unfortunate thing, and Ben will get a heads-up just in case Felix really is competition. I could hear Mom thinking about it.
“Well …”
“Good!” I said. “I’ll tell Ben. We’ll be there at four.”
I ran over to St. Thomas’s and invited Felix before Mom could call back and change her mind. He looked startled, and so did Ben when I told him we would be picking up a homeless guy to take him to Wuffie’s, but I just rolled right over both of them. It’s all set.
And Jesse is doing the sweetest thing. The morning after he bought me coffee and gave me the print of the White Duchess, I opened my locker and this little drawing fluttered out. He must have slipped it in through the vent slots. Noah was standing right there (he has the locker next to mine, another trial in my life), so I took it into the girls’ bathroom to look at it. It isn’t signed, but I know it’s from Jesse—it’s a drawing of a horse with a huge, curly black mane and tail that’s bigger than she is (it’s clearly a girl horse). And she has wings, but they’re drawn to look like they’re stuck on with duct tape and there’s a little sign hanging from one of them, like the tags on pillows, that says, WINGS ADDED BY ORDER OF THE PRINCESS. REGULATION 252, UNIVERSAL WINGS ACCESS BILL. I’ve taped it up on my bedroom wall next to the picture of the White Duchess.
And the next morning there was another one, this time a picture of a G.I. Joe doll and a plastic horse figurine sitting on a shelf. They’re looking at each other. And now there’s a drawing in my locker every morning. He never says anything about them when I see him in art class. I don’t say anything, either. It’s like a secret code, or getting an anonymous Valentine, only I know who it’s from.
This Sunday we had a Posadas rehearsal after Mass. Father Weatherford handed us our lines, which consist of: “I beg a room of you, for my wife is great with child,” on Noah’s part, and “I am blessed among women” and “What, no room at all?” on mine. The shepherds stood around baaing at each other, pretending to be sheep.
“We need a room ’cause my wife’s great in the sack,” Noah said, and everybody thought that was hysterical. Father Weatherford spoke severely to him about respect.
“Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy,” Mary Mahan informed me.
We’d all brought our work clothes, as instructed, and after we’d trooped off to the bathrooms to change into them, Father Weatherford handed out saws and hammers, which I could have told him was a mistake. He took them back again when the Wise Men started fencing. He finally got everybody settled down somehow (I wouldn’t take that man’s job—not that the church would let me, being still backward about women priests), and Noah and I got the assignment to make a manger out of an orange crate. Not only are we the happy parents, we get to furnish the nursery.
Noah held the two crosspieces for the legs against the end of the crate, which said FILLMORE LEMON ASSOCIATION on it. “Can you hold it steady while I hammer?” he asked me through a mouthful of nails.
I held it while he did his studly guy-in-a-toolbelt thing. “I guess it could be worse,” he said, through the nails. “We could have to be the sheep.”
“I’m surprised you said you’d be in it at all,” I told him. “You hardly ever come to Mass.”
“I’m scoring points with my mom. She’ll let me drive the car when I get my license if I promise to consider my relationship with God and don’t get in any more trouble at school.”
“Good luck on that.”
“Hey. That wasn’t my fault.”
He flipped the crate over and I held the other end while he hammered the legs on in a manly fashion. I hoped he would miss my thumb.
The shepherds were putting up the stable walls. The pageant’s still a month away but since it never rains here, Father Weatherford thinks it will be good advertisement for the event if we put the stable up and hang a sign and lights from it. He was trying to untangle some Christmas lights while Missy Escobar painted angels on the sign.
Noah set the manger upright and wiggled it. It didn’t rock too much. Then he actually asked me if I wanted to go down to the Frosty Freeze, and I was so surprised I said yes.
We walked there, and then had to dodge a clump of sticky little kids and a couple of Ayala High seniors making out at one of the tables. Noah got us each a Mister Softee ice cream with chocolate dip and actually paid for both of them himself.
“Uh, I’ve been sort of wanting to talk to you,” he said as I nipped the crunchy chocolate top off. Once you break it, it always starts to slide, and I chased a flake down the side of the cone.
“I mean, I sort of heard you’re still mad at me,” he went on, when I didn’t say anything.
“No shit.” If he was going to apologize for the incident with my shirt, I thought I’d make him really get into it. Even if his mother was making him do it.
“So, it wasn’t like I was trying to trash you or anything.”
“Of course not. If you’d wanted to do that, you’d have told the world that I let you feel me up.”
“I guess I wanted to think you had.” He gave me a kind of goofy smile.
“Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was?”
“No, I gu
ess not.” He looked penitent, and I thought it was probably the best I was going to get. He really didn’t have any idea.
We finished our cones and walked back to St. Thomas’s. Missy’s sign was propped up against the stable waiting for Felix to hang it. Her angels looked really good, with trumpets and everything announcing the coming attraction.
I was surprised to see Jesse leaning up against the stable next to the sign, looking antsy and worried. “Where have you been?” he said as soon as he saw me.
“What do you mean?”
“I came to give you a ride home after rehearsal. And make sure you were all right.” He shot Noah a look.
“I only live two blocks away. But that was really nice of you,” I said in a hurry, because Noah was giving Jesse a look back. I’d told Jesse about the pageant, of course, and how I’d rather be dead in a ditch than be in it. I may have overdramatized a bit to make him feel sorry for me.
Then Noah said, “Hey, Van Gogh. Stick to the love letters in the locker, okay?”
Jesse’s face flamed up bright red at that. He unfolded himself from under Missy’s sign and lurched over to Noah. “Listen up, you little shit …”
And that was when Felix came around the corner of the church with a hammer and nails. He gave me and Noah his own look right away and said, “Hey, troops, I’m about to clean those bathrooms. You want to get your clothes out of there for me?” Then he said to Jesse, “Give me a hand with these angels, will you?”
Noah had enough sense to keep quiet until we were inside. “Asshole,” he muttered as soon as we were out of earshot. “That dude’s a psycho, man. Pictures in your locker—that’s creepy. You ought to look out for him.”
“You shut up!” I snapped. “It’s none of your business!”
“I’m just saying …”
“Well, don’t! Because you don’t know anything!” I slammed the girls’ bathroom door behind me. Or tried to—it has one of those things that makes it creep closed.
When I came out, Noah was gone and Jesse was sitting on a hay bale in the stable talking to Felix. I was glad; talking to Felix might be good for Jesse. I stuck my head in and said, “Thanks for the offer, but I’d better walk home. I promised Grandma Alice I’d help clean the house.”
What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay Page 7