“Excellent! Thank you! This has been an outstandingly wonderful afternoon. You don’t like anything I do, you don’t like anything I say. I mean, it’s just been the same thing the whole bloody afternoon.”
“Hey.” Davey held up his hands. “Say no more.” The bus was coming, his bus, but he walked away and disappeared around the corner.
Eleven
Saturday morning, Karen threw some fruit and cookies in a bag, put her camera around her neck, and wheeled her bike out of the garage. The front tire was flat. She pumped it up and yelled good-bye again to her mother, who’d come outside to dump the garbage. Karen didn’t mean to do it, but found herself on Davey’s street. She bent low and pedaled fast past the little grocery store.
Going out of the city, traffic was heavy. It was a perfect spring day and the farther she got from the city, the bluer the sky. She was nearly to Paradise Lake when a red pickup truck slowed and pulled over. Scott looked out the window. “Karen!”
“Hi.” She straddled her bike.
“What are you doing way out here?”
“I was going over to Paradise Lake.”
He leaned on his arm. “Where the hell is that?”
She waved. “About a mile on.”
“Oh, you mean Mud Pond.”
“Mud Pond?”
“It’s where you’re going.”
“No. Paradise Lake.”
“Same thing,” he said. “You’re not swimming in this weather?”
“I just wanted someplace to go. What do you mean, Mud Pond and Paradise Lake are the same?”
“Oh, I’ll tell you about it,” he said. But then he didn’t, just leaned on his arm, smiling and looking at her.
She put her hand up to shade her eyes from the sun. “Well.…” Was the conversation going to die right here? Then she thought, Ask him where he’s going. “Where’re you going, Scott?”
“Out to the house we’re building.”
“Oh, it’s out this way?” Then she thought of something else to say. “The one you were showing Liz? You’re going to work on it?”
He looked sheepish. “No, I was just going out to admire it a little. Want to come along with me and see it?”
“I don’t know.…” Liar. Of course she wanted to go with him. What if he was just saying it, though, only being nice to her so he could impress Liz? I took your kid sister out to the site, showed her around, cute kid.…
“We can throw your bike in back.” There was a big red tool chest in back of the pickup, some empty boxes, and scraps of wood. “Plenty of room,” he said. He started to get out.
“No, I can do it.”
He got out, anyway, and it ended with both of them lifting her bike into the back of the truck.
She climbed into the front seat.
“I like to show off everything I do. I’m not modest at all.” He lit a cigarette. “The house is on Robert Kelly Road, Karen.” He held out the pack to her. “Do you smoke?”
“No. But I’d like to have one, anyway.” She lit up, blew smoke and tipped her head.
“I’m not too good at inner solitude,” Scott said. “I’m the sort of person who likes company better than being alone. How about you, Karen?”
“Yes, I’m the same.” Was she? She puffed away.
“You go swimming at the lake a lot?”
“Not so much anymore. A few times every summer.”
“I bet you’re a good swimmer. You look like you have swimmers’ shoulders. I used to swim there when I was a kid, when it was Mud Pond.” He put his hand briefly on her knee. “That was before your time.”
“You really called it Mud Pond?”
“Oh, sure. We’d swim from one shore to the other. It was smaller then, you could swim all the way across and feel like a big hero. Big Olympic stuff. But every time you got out of the water, you had to do a leech hunt.”
“Ugggh, leeches.”
“You ever pull leeches from in between your toes, Karen?”
“We used to kill them with salt.”
“Try a lit cigarette.”
“Uggggh. I hate them.”
“Uggggh. Me, too.”
He pulled out the ashtray. “Here’s the ashtray, Karen.”
She tapped ash, put the cigarette back between her lips.
“When Marvin Paradisio bought the pond, first thing he did, even before he bulldozed it out, was put up NO TRESPASSING signs to keep us kids off. And then he built that phony entrance with the turrets and towers.”
“You don’t like it?”
Maybe her distress was apparent in her voice. Scott patted her knee again. “It’s kind of cute, campy, but you know I was brought up on good old plain Mud Pond.” He slowed down. “There it is.”
Over the years the sign had gone gray and faded.
“‘Welcome to Paradise Lake.’ Some welcome,” Scott said. “You have to pay to get in, don’t you?”
“Not that much. It used to be just a quarter.”
“And now?”
“Well … seventy five cents last time I was there. That was last year.”
“Probably be a dollar this year.” Scott laughed. “A buck to swim in Mud Pond! What a crazy world.”
But it was worth it! Worth it to Karen to see the same woman, in the same little booth, who’d been there the day Liz got her license. Thin, dark-eyed, sticking her bony claw out of her cage, the woman took your money and gave you a key without a word. Always it was the same thing—the woman, then the sagging wooden decking, the bare dressing room, the showers that spritzed little streams of cold water on the damp cement floors, and hanging over everything, over the hot, dirty sand and the little lake, the spicy odor of hot dogs, like the smell of summer.
The house Scott was building was a few miles past Paradise Lake, on top of a hill. The house was framed up, the roof trusses in place. Below, the land rolled away. Karen looked off at the land and the the sky, thinking that there were some things you couldn’t photograph, some things you couldn’t even speak about.
“Ready to see the house?” Scott had a roll of blueprints under his arm.
She followed him up a wooden ramp. Light fell into the house everywhere. “That’s going to be a wall and there’ll be a skylight there,” Scott said, pointing. “Maybe a fireplace. This is going to be the master bedroom … window here, looking into the woods.…” They went up a ladder to look at the loft area. “Wood, plus solar heat. You know what the insulation is? R-16.” He unrolled the prints, spread them out on the floor. “I love showing this place off.”
“You really are more like an architect,” she said.
“No, what I know I’ve picked up here and there. I was carpentering when I was twelve years old with my dad. You learn a lot that way.”
They sat outside on the framed deck, shared Karen’s fruit and cookies and a candy bar Scott fished out of his jacket. She put her camera down next to her.
“Liz says you do a lot of stuff with photography, Karen.”
“I just fool around. I like it, but.…”
“What sort of things do you photograph?”
“I don’t know. Faces. Hands. Feet.”
“Feet?”
She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “I have this theory, sort of, that you can tell a person’s character from their shoes.”
He stuck out his feet. “Get out your crystal ball.”
She aimed the camera at his feet. He was wearing muddy, stub-nosed work boots with red and white laces. “You have enthusiasm, you’re hard-working, but you also have fun in life.”
“Right on the mark.” He hugged her, the camera between them, his face against her face. A warm, firm hug. Her voice dried up, she smelled metal, cigarettes, soap. And what if he said to her, Come on! Give me a little kiss!
They started talking again, as if it were completely ordinary that they were there together. Well, it was, wasn’t it? Karen couldn’t stop thinking about the hug and his skin and the smell of his skin, as if they h
ad crept into her, were becoming part of her. “Yes, that was funny.” They were talking about a movie. Apparently she sounded normal. But she couldn’t stop thinking about his arm so close to her arm, his leg so close to her leg.…
“Are you cold, Karen?”
She must have shivered. “No. I’m fine.”
He rolled up the prints and they went back to the truck. Karen got her bike. “Glad to give you a ride back into the city,” he said.
“Oh, no, that’s all right.” They shook hands, a formal moment, as if the hug never had been. He climbed into the truck, waved, and drove off immediately. She stood there only a moment, then she left, too.
Twelve
Karen tied a red and blue scarf around her neck and fastened three silver ear clips on her left ear. Some other touch was still needed. Yesterday in school, Davey had been very stagey about not noticing her. From which she concluded that they were still fighting. She wasn’t mad anymore. In fact, she was in a wonderful mood, had been ever since Saturday and Scott. She put on a hat, a fedora that had been her grandmother’s, tipped it over her eyes and picked up Gertrude.
In the kitchen she took a banana and sat down across from Tobi. “Hel-lo!”
Tobi raised her hair off her face, grunted, and let the hair drop again. Tobi was always only half human in the morning until she ate something. Then Karen remembered last night. Jason had driven Tobi home from school—or somewhere. As her mother had said, confronting Tobi in the hall, “Surely school doesn’t let out at ten to eleven.”
“Very fine sarcasm, Mom.” Tobi had walked into the living room, where Karen was eating grapes and watching tv.
Her mother followed her. “Where were you?”
Tobi popped a grape into her mouth. “With Jason.”
“Yes, I heard that much. Someplace where there was no phone?”
“As a matter of fact, you’re right. No phone.”
“Ahh. And where is this primitive place?”
Tobi chewed the grape and breathed hard. “Jason’s studio,” she said finally. “He can’t have a phone ringing when he’s working.”
“Jason’s studio. Is that where he lives, too?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. We ate supper there.”
Her mother studied Tobi, seemed about to say something, then walked out. But a moment later she was back. “There must have been a phone somewhere!”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call. Next time I will call you. All right? Can we end the inquisition?”
“No. One more question. Why did he drop you and run?”
“He didn’t drop me and run! He knows he’s not welcome here.”
“Where did he get that idea? Did I ever say that? Did your father?”
“Mom. Everything does not have to be said in order to be understood.”
Through all that, Karen hadn’t said a word, although she felt she ought to show her loyalty to Tobi in some way. Now, in the breakfast nook, in a voice loud enough to reach her parents in the dining room, she said, “I’d like to see some of Jason’s sculpture, Tobi.”
Tobi, grateful creature that she was, only grunted. So much for gestures of solidarity.
Karen’s father gave her a lift to school. Last year he’d bought himself an English car, a white Rover with low-slung red seats. “Maybe I’d learn to drive faster if I practiced on your car, Dad.”
He downshifted tenderly at a corner. “No, darling.”
“Mom’s car is so clunky.”
“There’s only one key to this car and—”
“—it’s in my pocket,” Karen finished with him. He dropped her at the corner near the school. She gave him a kiss in payment for the ride, although she hadn’t liked kissing him for about a year now.
In school she saw Marisa and ran to catch up with her. “Hi, Marisa, I’m in a fabulous mood.”
“You look it! I like your hat.”
“The last time I wore it, Mr. Radosh had a fit. He wanted to take it away from me. I just said, No, no, no, no, no way, dear Mr. R. I must have been in a fabulous mood that day, too.”
“There’s your friend,” Marisa said, as Davey walked by with a group of boys. He glanced at Karen and then pointedly away.
“What was that about?” Marisa asked.
“The big D and I had a fight the other day.”
“Oh, it can’t be serious?”
“I don’t think so. We’ll make it up.”
She was jaunty all day. She and David finally came face-to-face in Mrs. Pritchard’s science class. Talking to Tommy Taylor, he stood with his arms folded across his chest, hair falling in his face.
“Hiii,” Karen said.
“Hi, Karen,” Tommy said. Nothing from Davey.
She sat down at her desk with Gladys. Behind her, someone yawned like a sea lion. Chester Mills slumped at his seat, his long face down on his arms. She started planning a series of photos. High school. But it wouldn’t be happy, happy yearbook stuff, it would be gritty, real … dirty pipes in the basement … water on the bathroom floor … tired teacher faces … sullen student faces.…
“Hi, there.” She stuck her foot across the aisle toward Davey.
“Mmm.” Davey glowered. Roar. Roar. The lion in his den.
“How’s Eggbert doing?”
“Mmm.”
She tipped her hat down over her eyes. “Mmm, mmm,” she mimicked. Oh, well, now that she’d started, she wasn’t about to give up. “Say, Davey, your kid looks a bit grubby. He could use a bath.”
“He’s a slob.”
A real sentence. “Sorry for you, Dad. My kid, now, she’s a four-star bather.”
“Good old Gladys.”
“Well, today’s the day we can turn our kids out of house and home if we want to.”
“About time, too. Little Eggy is getting the boot right into the garbage.”
“You’re not going to miss the child?”
“If you want to know the truth, he’s starting to stink.”
“I guess I’ll keep Gladys for a while.” She tapped Davey’s foot. “So, are we friends again, or what?”
“Why not?” he said.
His lack of enthusiasm hurt. Maybe that was the point—he was still mad. She leaned her head on her hand, thought again about trying to get across to Davey how she felt. Put it in simple words. I like you. I like you a lot. More than any other boy I know. I like kissing you. That’s great. I mean it. The rest of it—can’t we just wait?
They met after school with some other kids to play touch football. She left her hat under a tree and borrowed a sweat shirt from Tommy Taylor. The grass was soggy; they ran, passed the ball, slid, and slipped. “Get him, Karen,” Tommy yelled, “get Davidface.” She tackled him, the ball popped out of his hands, Margie Lewis grabbed it, and Karen and Davey fell to the ground together. “Hi, friend,” she said to his muddy face.
He gave her a hand up, pursed his lips, and said fast, “Karen, I’ve been thinking. We should stop going together.”
“What?” she said, although she’d heard him perfectly.
“Stop going together,” he repeated softly. “Okay?” he said. “Okay?”
Billy Parker yelled, “Hey, hey, hey. Heads up, guys.” David held out his hands for the ball, it sailed past him and then everyone was running, screaming, and Karen heard herself say, “Okay. Okay, if that’s what you want, Davey,” and she turned into the pack of kids, running with them.
Thirteen
In the little bathroom off the kitchen, Karen washed the mud off her face. Her eyes kept leaking tears. The knees of her jeans were stiff with mud. She stuffed them in the hamper and went into the kitchen. She was incredibly hungry. She slurped down a dish of slimy tapioca, ate the rest of the stale butter cookies, and peeled a banana.
The mail was on the counter. Bills, catalogues, magazines, and a single letter, an oversize sky-blue envelope addressed to Tobi. On the back flap, the return signature: Jason Wade Wilson. Then Tobi’s name scrawled across the face of the envelope i
n green ink, looped and full of flourishes, as festive as a bunch of green balloons sailing into a blue sky. Karen thought, If Davey wrote me a letter, it would have a black border and disappearing ink.
She threw the banana peel into the sink. It was full of dishes; the morning pots were still on the stove. She stared at the mess. Her mother would come home and say, “Why didn’t you wash the dishes? Scrub potatoes for tonight? Set the table, at least! Doesn’t anybody do anything in this house but me?” Karen stuck her fingers into the jam jar, licked them. How come Liz hadn’t cleaned up? Or Tobi? Both so dopey in love they didn’t even see what was under their noses?
She picked up the letter, traced her fingers across Tobi’s name. A love letter. You could tell just from the way Jason had sent Tobi’s name flying across the envelope. That, in itself, was a love message. She thought with a kind of awful despair of how much Jason must love Tobi.
Karen had never had a love letter from anybody. Certainly not from Davey. Now and then a note passed in school, a few words scribbled on a torn piece of paper, none of them memorable. “Can U meet me at trophy case? … Dr. B. gave me 1 hr detention.… I need 2$, pay you back Fri.” A man of few words. With a few words, he’d broken them apart as easily as snapping a stick in half. And she, the original cooperative kid, had meekly and sweetly agreed. Okay, Davey, if that’s what you want. Her little voice. Her reasonable voice. Why hadn’t she screamed in his face? You traitor! No, it’s not all right, turkey dip! It’s all wrong! We’re friends! Friends don’t act this way!
What if he was already regretting it? What if he was home right now writing her? His first real letter to her, the most important letter of his life.
Dear Karen, Is it too late? Are you still speaking to me, or have I ruined everything? I don’t know why I said what I did. Of course, I don’t want to break up with you! I think you’re fantastic. You’re the best friend I ever had. So whatever I said today, just forget it. Love, D. P.S. You can call me Davey from now on, if you want to.
Dear David, I just this minute got your letter. Thank goodness! I was horribly hurt, David. I cried when I got home. I know we have our differences, but I always thought we would go on being friends, no matter what. So, no, it isn’t too late. It’s never too late for friends like us. Love, Karen.
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