Mean Season

by Heather Cochran

  A few weeks later, after she’d been harassed about it a few times and read up on where she now perched in the social scheme of things, she got a little mad. Sandy would say she was just more in touch with it all, with the anger and the love. Maybe that was true, but her ornery side was the most visible.

  Sandy’s mean season was wide-open that Saturday when we met at The Buccaneer, one of Pinecob’s two bars. I always considered “Buccaneer” a silly name for a bar in a land-locked state like West Virginia, but it sat dead center on the only commercial strip in town. With a good location, I guess the Buck’s owner could have named that place anything and still pulled a crowd. Most everyone went there. Well, except Sandy and me, we hardly ever went there. But I was tired of Momma being the only person who got to go out on weekends, so I up and said that I was going. Besides, she wasn’t home to stop me, and Joshua had been with us a little over a month by then, so I figured he’d do fine watching Beau Ray.

  We sat at a booth near the jukebox, and ordered beers from Loreen Dunbar, the girl Howard Malkin cheated on me with. She’d been a waitress there for a couple of years, which is one of the reasons Sandy and I didn’t frequent the place. Not that I held a huge grudge, but a little one, sure.

  “So Leanne,” Loreen said, after we’d ordered. “Any good stories?”

  That was a second reason I hadn’t been hanging out at the Buccaneer. I hated all the asking, hated hearing myself tell the same story over and over. Maybe if I had good stories, I’d have felt different. Sandy’s news was more buzzworthy, knowing Pinecob, but it wasn’t common knowledge at that point.

  “Nah,” I said. “I don’t actually see him all that much.”

  “How come?” Loreen asked, but I got lucky and she was summoned by another customer. “I’ll be back with your beers,” she said.

  “Guess who I see?” Sandy asked, and then she waved.

  It being Pinecob, Sandy might have seen anyone from our growing up. It might have been Howard Malkin, the cheat himself, or Barton Albert or Paulie Pizzoni or Lionel Hutchinson or really anyone. But I turned around and saw Max Campbell walking over, which was better than all of them by a long shot. And somehow worse, too.

  “Hey Sandy, hey Leanne,” he said. “I like your hair, Leanne. It’s different, right?”

  I nodded. I’d brought a picture from one of Alice’s magazines to the salon the day before. All week, I’d been leafing through her loaner periodicals, but a haircut was all the change I’d managed.

  “It looks good,” Max said.

  “Who are you here with?” Sandy asked.

  “My cousins Lisa and Laura are up from Roanoke. They wanted me to show them a good time,” Max said.

  “So you took them to the Buccaneer? Remind me not to call you when I want a hot date,” Sandy said.

  “Hey, they’re not complaining.” Max pointed to two blond women playing doubles pool with a couple guys I didn’t know.

  “It doesn’t look like,” Sandy agreed.

  “What about you? And don’t try to sell me on Leanne being your Saturday-night squeeze,” he said.

  “Hey!” I said, pretending to be insulted.

  Max looked at Sandy, it seemed to me, the way a lot of guys looked at Sandy, like she was a pleasant surprise, like looking at gold.

  “None of your business,” Sandy said. “But I am seeing someone new. Someone fabulous.”

  “Someone fabulous?” Max asked. He sat down beside her. “Won’t Scooter be crushed. That might do the old boy in.”

  Loreen brought us our beers, and I took a big sip of mine so maybe I’d be less tongue-tied. Loreen gave Max a big smile.

  “Scooter will get over it,” Sandy said.

  “You’re heartless, Wilson. Always have been. Anyone I know?” Max asked.

  “You know anyone in Hagerstown?”

  Max shook his head.

  “Then, no,” Sandy said.

  “So tell me about him,” Max said, and in a space of a blink, Sandy looked ready to spit fire.

  “Typical,” she snapped. “I said it’s none of your business, and I’m serious!”

  “Sandy,” I said, trying to point out that she’d been way snappier than need be.

  “Sorry,” Max said. “I didn’t realize you had nerves enough to strike.”

  “Go bother Leanne about her love life,” Sandy said. “Leave mine be.”

  “Sandy!” I said again, this time wanting to shut her up for a different reason.

  Max turned to me. “I see Leanne every Sunday,” he said. “There’s nothing to pick on her about. And even if there was, I promised I wouldn’t gossip about her.” He winked, like the two of us had a secret. I thought about him standing there, in the doorway of my house and wondered if we did. “But you, Wilson, you’ve near as hell disappeared off the map.”

  “How do you know Leanne doesn’t have a love life to pick on? You don’t know everything about her. Yeah, you see her, but you don’t really see her. You hardly know anything,” Sandy said.

  I tried to kick her under the table, but I missed and jammed my toe against the booth-back. Max looked over and sort of frowned. I smiled at him, hoping to seem nonchalant.

  “I noticed her hair,” Max said. “Leanne holds her cards so close, I can’t get anything out of her,” he said. “You, I can make all sorts of conjectures about.”

  “But Leanne’s the one with the hunk in her house, isn’t she?” Sandy asked. “Right across the hall. Isn’t it strange how little she talks about that?”

  “We all know there’s nothing there,” I said, quick as can be.

  Sandy shrugged. “So you say,” she said. “But if you’re so available, why aren’t you out and about?”

  “Look at me. I’m out,” I said, really wishing that the subject would die. But Sandy still wasn’t done.

  “What about asking out that guy from your office? Otto? Or that guy you think is cute at the SpeedLube? Or Lionel. You could always go back to Lionel. You could even ask Max here out to another play.”

  “What?” Max asked.

  “What?” I asked, only I knew exactly what she was referring to, and I hated when she did this, handing her pissy moods to me like dripping socks. Plus, when Sandy was feeling mean, she’d barrel over the same looks that she’d catch on subtler days.

  “You remember…when Leanne asked you to see South Pacific?” Sandy asked Max.

  “What are you talking about?” Max asked, looking between me and Sandy, like this might be a private joke he didn’t get.

  I thought it would be better if I told the story, so I cut Sandy off before she could say more. “It’s nothing,” I said. “It was years ago. There’s no reason you should remember. My mother’s cousin, Nora, down in Charleston, is a drama teacher and her school put on South Pacific, and it won a competition, so it played in a bunch of the county seats, including Charles Town… None of this rings a bell?”

  Max shook his head. “When was this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know—maybe three years back?” I went on. “It was a Sunday, and I was at the Winn-Dixie, and you were there, and I asked what you were doing later that week, on that Friday, when they were going to put on the play. I asked if you wanted to go see it—with me.”

  “That sounds vaguely familiar,” Max said. “What did I say?”

  “You told me you were scheduled to work that Friday, but you’d see if you could get off, and you’d call to let me know.”

  “But,” Sandy said, forcing a transition. I braced myself for what had to come next, like when you see a pothole too late to swerve off.

  “I didn’t call?” Max guessed.

  “What happened was…that was the week you met Charlene,” I said. “At least, that’s what I found out later.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Max said. “I think I do remember that. God, I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever. No big deal now, you know. Bad timing, is all.”

  “No, Leanne, I am sorry. That was kind of a crazy time for me. I
probably dropped a lot of balls right around then.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Sandy said.

  I knew that she just wanted to be mad at him for having assumed she was dating a guy, even though he’d have to have been a psychic to guess about Alice. I mean, Sandy had practically been engaged to Barton Albert just a few years prior.

  “It’s fine. I know it’s not every week a guy meets his soul mate,” I said.

  “That’s not the word I’d use for Charlene,” Max said.

  “Better that than, I mean, if you weren’t going to call, better it’s on account of meeting your future wife. Better than you forgetting, or it just being some other girl. But you know, no big deal.” I felt like I was about to cry although I didn’t know the reason. It was nearly three years before that this had happened—or not happened—between me and Max, but it suddenly felt like last week. I turned to Sandy for help, and she seemed to see me for the first time.

  “Got you over that little crush anyhow,” Sandy said. “Right quick, too.”

  “I guess,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “I feel like such a jerk. I’m really sorry,” Max said.

  “Like I said, no big deal,” I told him. “I can’t think why it came up.”

  I frowned at Sandy, then grabbed my beer and downed it as quick as I could. I put the glass back on the table with a thunk. Sandy and Max looked at the glass, then at me. “Man, that was good,” I said.

  Max looked into his own beer, still half-full. “Can I get you another?” he asked. It seemed obvious that he was trying to be extra nice for the slight, three years gone.

  “Would you mind?” I said. As soon as he got up from the table, I turned to Sandy. “How could you say that? Why did you bring that up?” I asked her.

  She blinked at me. “What?”

  “About the time in the Winn-Dixie,” I said. “About South Pacific.”

  “That was years ago. It’s funny.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “But you can’t still… It didn’t seem to bother you much back then.”

  “I would think that you, of all people in my entire life, could tell when I’m faking something,” I said to her.

  Sandy’s eyes got wide. “Oh,” she said. “It was worse than that?” Whatever anger she’d been carrying evaporated. “Oh damn, Leanne. I’m sorry. You should have told me.”

  “You were all happy with Barton back then, remember? I didn’t want…” I felt myself start to choke up again, and willed it away. “It took me a long time,” I said. “You know, first to ask, and then to get over asking.”

  “So your crush?” She looked at me and I shrugged. “Still?” she asked.

  “I can’t help it,” I told her. “Even knowing about Charlene and him all holding on. Nothing’s ever going to happen.”

  “I never would have said it if I’d known. Please believe me,” she said.

  “I figured it was obvious,” I said.

  “The crush? No. Not at all. You’re cool around him. Except for that part just now when you almost started to cry.”

  “It’s been a rough week,” I told her.

  “I don’t think he noticed,” Sandy said.

  “So was it a good play? Did you go?” Max asked.

  He put a new beer down and sat beside me in the booth. I moved over to give him room and could feel liquid jostling around in my stomach. It usually took me about an hour to finish a beer, so I didn’t even know where to begin with the second one.

  “What?”

  “South Pacific. Your mom’s cousin’s school. Did you go?”

  “Yeah, it was. I did. You know, I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair,” I said, singing it like they do in the musical. “How are your own cousins doing?”

  Max turned toward the pool table. “We’re going to head home after this game. We’ve got hours of home movies my mother wants us all to watch. Mostly of my mom and their mom when they were little. We figured we’d come here first and get a couple drinks down, to make the viewing more interesting.” Max looked at me. “But I’m just having this one,” he said. “I’m driving.”

  I shrugged.

  Chapter 11

  The Guys Again

  Round about the time Sandy and I were talking to Max, Lionel was calling my house. Me not being there, he talked to Joshua, and by the time I was back from the Buccaneer, the two of them had hatched a plan for another Sunday night movie at our house, and there was nothing I could do about it. Scooter had family obligations, but otherwise, it was going to be the same audience as for Die Hard, plus Max’s two cousins from Roanoke were invited, since they’d still be in town.

  God, I was feeling low all day that Sunday. I had no energy for anything, especially the thought of company. I didn’t even have energy for grocery shopping, and when Momma offered to go with Beau Ray, I took her up on it so fast, she asked if I was sick.

  I wasn’t sick, I was sapped. Maybe it was the summertime heat kicking in, or maybe it was Momma and the way she’d started talking about her and Judge Weintraub as a “we.” I swear, I didn’t begrudge my mother one minute of happiness, but it still made me aware that I was nowhere near to being a “we.”

  Or maybe it was Sandy’s “we.” Since she hadn’t told anyone but me about Alice, I was hearing an awful lot on the subject. After Max left the Buck with his cousins, I kept on hearing about her. How great she was, how funny she was, how stylish she was, how everything she was. Sure I wanted to be happy for Sandy, and I was happy for Sandy, but I had others moods mixed in, too.

  I didn’t want to be part of a “we” just so I could use the pronoun more. I could have gone back to Lionel—I was pretty sure of that—if my only goal had been to use the word. But the more I thought about Lionel and me, the more it felt like being in a pool and treading water, refreshing for a spell, but tiresome after a time, and you’re always in the same place.

  Even Joshua, who didn’t seem apt at noticing anything, asked what was up. He was just out of the shower, and I was headed into my room to get ready before everyone showed up.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Joshua asked.

  I told him nothing, I mean, that nothing was wrong.

  “You drink too much last night? Are you hungover?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, someone’s cranky today.” He was standing in the doorway of Vince’s bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Just a towel and the gray ankle sensor, still beaded with water. He’d gotten quite tan in the previous weeks and was keeping in shape with Tommy’s old weight set. His chest seemed like something from a sculpture or a perfume ad. Part of me wanted to reach out and touch it, to see what it felt like, although I’d touched plenty of chests before then. Funny, but his chest being so perfect made it hard to look at it. To see something like that, so close, and to know that it might as well be a mirage, not for you and not ever to be yours—that’s no pleasure. Maybe that was my problem with Max.

  I don’t think Joshua was standing there half-naked because he considered himself a symbol of all I couldn’t have. Not right then, at least. He was just standing there. He was a guy out of the shower, after all. The way they tell you, when you’ve got an interview or a speech to give, to think of everyone in their underwear. He was like that. Real. Human.

  “I don’t feel like having company, is all,” I managed to say.

  He shrugged. “You don’t have to watch.”

  For a moment, I thought maybe I had been staring, that he’d noticed I was having a hard time looking away from him. But he went into his room, and I realized that he must have meant the movie. I didn’t have to watch the movie.

  In my room, behind the door, I pulled off my shirt and my shorts and stood in front of my closet in my underwear. It felt good in the summertime heat to be out of the day’s sweaty clothes, but there was nothing hanging up or folded that struck me as the right thing to change into. I didn’t know what I wanted to wear, because what I wore seemed
more than ever like an extension of who or where I wanted to be. If I didn’t have the answers to those questions, how could I ever expect to find an outfit to match? I had looked through some of the magazines Alice had brought—the same ones where I’d found my new haircut—and there were so many ideas in there. But none of my clothes looked like the magazine clothes. Everything in my closet seemed too bright and too sunny and too obvious.

  I’d read in one of the magazines where a designer said, “when in doubt, wear black.” And I’d always heard that people in New York dressed in black all the time. I figured why not—at least my clothing would match my mood. So I wore a plain black T-shirt and black pants and pulled my hair back into a ponytail.

  But come to find out the “wear black” rule doesn’t work for Pinecob, West Virginia. I should have known that “when in doubt, wear boots,” or maybe “wear jeans,” is the rule there, and I knew I’d broken it when I opened the door for Lionel and Paulie, and Lionel said, “Whoa, where’s the funeral?” and Paulie asked if I’d gone “goth,” as he handed me a six-pack. Still I figured, what did they know, and I was halfway to forgetting their comments when Max showed up with Laura and Lisa, his cousins.

  Laura and Lisa were both dressed in cute little summery skirts and matching tops, and their blond hair was all bouncy and shiny, as if they’d taken turns blow-drying each other. One had blue eyeshadow and one had lavender, but besides that, they looked an awful lot alike. They were sunny and nice and totally killed whatever good spirits I had left in me.

  “Hey, Leanne,” Max said. “You feeling okay?”

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “Your mom did the shopping today, and I don’t know, you look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I told him. “I’ll get Joshua and we can start.” I noticed Laura elbow Lisa, who giggled a little. I hoped they wouldn’t fawn over Joshua. I thought that might make me physically ill.

  “He’s upstairs then?” Max asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Across the hall,” Max said.

  “Yeah, why?”

  But Max just shrugged.

  “Who wants a beer?” Lionel asked.