Thank Dustin when you see him, Lyle said. He green-lighted the idea.
Thanks, Dustin, I said to you later at dinner. You shrugged and looked over at Lyle. Your face was sealed quiet over your thoughts.
That weekend our bathroom was full of brushes and paint cans labeled Prussian/Semi-Gloss. I stood in the doorway and watched while Lyle painted all four walls the smooth blue of clear skies. I told Lyle he was the coolest and I meant it.
Only later that week Spider-Man was back, taped in crooked sheets to the outside of your door. The strips were bumpy from being in the pail, and the design didn’t match up anymore. Some places Spidey’s foot was coming out of his waist or he looked like he had two heads, and the paper was flopping over at the top. I didn’t know what to do except for tell Lyle first thing that maybe painting your work space wasn’t such a green light idea, after all. I saw him cup a hand on your shoulder before you left for school.
Whatever you and Lyle said was nothing that turned into my business, but Spider-Man stayed on your door. Although you never spoke direct to me about it, I minded it as a private sign of how much I’d wrecked your house.
MOTELS STINK, I GUESS since they remind me of Before. This one is not bad, I’ve slept in worse. Still.
Mallory is acting Very Special, as Lyle puts it. At the check-in desk, she is asking the lady too many questions. The lady has a worried face, and her lips twitch from all the questions Mallory keeps throwing her.
“Is there continental breakfast?”
“Do you have a workout room?”
“Are feather pillows available?”
And when Liptwitch says, “Oh my, wish I could help you with that but no,” Mallory repeats, “No breakfast? No feather pillows, really? Hmm, that certainly is less convenient than I might have expected.”
“They’ve got a pool,” I speak up.
“No room service at all?” Mallory asks. Liptwitch looks even more worried as she twitches no. People don’t like to disappoint Mallory; nobody wants a rotten stare from a good-looking face. I know this firsthand from last year when Jennifer Gold cut me a stare to freeze hell over after I budged her in fire drill. We’re next to each other in sixth-grade homeroom this year, and so far I’ve managed never to turn in her direction on account of not wanting to come under that stare again. Jennifer Gold is too much of a looker for me to survive it twice.
Lyle says he’ll be back with the bags at the same time Mallory says we should try to find another motel. Their words jumble together and then they’re both quiet.
“It’s got a pool,” I repeat, and amazingly that settles it. Mallory gets the room keys, one for her, one for Lyle and me, as Lyle heads out to the car for the bags.
Me, I need to run. My plane nap, the strong sun, our fast car, and no school have put me in a flow of energy. I can’t even snap my mind over the fact that soon I’ll be seeing you and Mom.
Outside, I spy a paved walkway bending along to the back of the motel. So I go. My sneakers are new and they make me run fast. I round the corner and there’s just rubble, no more walkway, and I’m heading for a gravel-dirt hill. I aim for the top. Lyle’s calling my name, a sound soft as a curl of smoke in the hot air and just as easy to ignore.
The hill is steep and I’m sweating. I pull off my sweater and knot it around my waist. Slowing down, but I keep pushing, digging my toes into the hill to keep my balance. I’m feeling charged with blood, oxygen, muscles. Feeling good to move move move on instant brain command.
I go and I go.
The top of the hill is higher up than it looked, but it’s in my mind now to keep running, because once I’m up there I’ll be the highest part of the hill, the owner of it.
WHAT LYLE CALLS UNDEPENDABLE, Mom calls free. She and Dad raised me loose, without much attention to rules, theirs or anybody else’s. Always I was the kid who needed extra days to hand in his field-trip permission slip, because Dad and Mom kept forgetting to sign it. The kid who came home with teachers’ notes explaining how cut-off shorts or jeans with holes weren’t acceptable attire and please make a note of it. The last kid to be picked up from a birthday party. Always it was me. Always me.
But Lyle’s house has rules. They are simple and they never change. Make your bed. Finish your homework. Unload the dishwasher. If I miss a rule, I pay for it. No television. No phone calls. No Super Nintendo.
Mom didn’t come into Lyle’s house with any rules, and you figured that out quick. You were always tugging her over to your side, which got easier when the problems with Mom and Lyle began to widen the spaces between their good times together.
Since day one there had been little shakes, like Mom telling Lyle he was too strict and who cared if you stayed out past your curfew or if you skipped gym? But I always count the night of Crash by Force as the place in time that cracked and broke the ground dividing you from Lyle, with me standing on Lyle’s side and Mom next to you on the other.
It started with Lyle not letting you go because Tuesday night was a school night. I actually didn’t hear him say those words. You repeated them to me after you’d slammed upstairs and banged into my room, to talk and pace it out.
He won’t let me go. I already paid for these tickets and the concert starts in five hours. How am I going to tell Daphne?
Couldn’t you resell them? I asked.
No. Yeah, but that’s not the point. Daphne might even break up with me over this. It’s so unfair. Every other kid in my class is going. I need to talk to Gina.
You slammed back downstairs and waited for Mom, and I know she must have taken to your side, because dinner that night was just lots of scraping forks and knives, with Lyle’s face starched into stiff edges and Mom chain-smoking at the table, even though Lyle had made a rule about no cigarettes during meals.
After I went back upstairs, I heard you in your room on the computer, and I figured you were sending raving-mad e-mails to your friends. I got ready for bed thinking you were still in your room. So when Lyle came up a while later and switched on my light and asked where you were, I was truthfully stumped.
He’s not in his room?
Not since I checked ten seconds ago. I think he took the out-the-window, down-the-drainpipe route. Gina’s MIA too. She said she was going to the drugstore, but that was about a hour ago. Lyle’s chin was tucked down, he was talking at the floor, and it hit me that he was embarrassed. That he felt dumb and tricked.
I don’t get it, I said, and I didn’t, but Lyle must have. I followed him into his study, where he called Daphne’s house. Daphne’s mom told him that Mom and Dustin had picked up Daphne on the way to Crash by Force.
She said she was glad for the adult supervision, Lyle told me after he got off the phone, laughing a little; a sound that I hated because I knew he was laughing at himself, at the joke on him. Then he said go back to bed, that everything would be straightened out by morning, and he went down to the kitchen to make coffee and read and wait. I crawled upstairs but I couldn’t sleep, I just lay there bug-eyed and waiting and waiting for you and Mom to come home.
But I must have dozed off anyhow, because voices startled my eyes open. Mom’s voice especially. It was late, past midnight, and when I scooted down to the kitchen everybody seemed a lot more awake than me. Lyle was sitting at the table drinking coffee, not saying a word, just watching Mom, who talked enough for two, all blah blah blah about the band, and even breaking into little chipped-off parts of songs. You and Daphne were watching her too; your arm was looped over Daphne’s shoulder and your eyes were stunned and dreamy, like spotlights had been shined into them.
Hey there, runt, you said. I got you something. You tossed it to me, a bendable tube that was filled with electric neon yellowish-green liquid.
It glows in the dark, Daphne explained. They were selling them at the concert. You should have seen it, Ben. The whole entire audience was swaying and glowing in harmony.
To demonstrate, she grabbed my light stick and rocked from side to side, all spacey.
Daphne was like that. I grabbed my stick back.
I haven’t been to a concert in years, Mom said, the first words I saw her direct to Lyle. I could tell she was hauling every pound of blame for those missed concerts up on Lyle’s shoulders.
Then you should get out more, Lyle answered.
Yeah, no kidding, Mom shot back. If I want to, I sure will. She sounded kiddish and overheated. I knew if I’d talked like that, I’d have got warned to get some sleep or drink juice.
But Lyle just shifted his eyes to you and said it was time to drop Daphne back at her house. I offered to go with him, thinking he’d answer no and tell me to scat back to bed, but he nodded okay, and I zipped my jacket over my pajamas. You wanted to go too, but Lyle shook his head. It was plain that both you and Mom were sort of nervous of Lyle, but weren’t going to do or say anything else against him, not then. You barely said good-bye to Daphne or good night to Mom as she drifted upstairs.
Daphne sat in the backseat and Lyle didn’t say a solitary word to her all the way to her house. He did walk up to the door with her, to apologize to her mom for keeping her out so late.
Now what, Ben? he asked on the way home.
A dryness filled my mouth and I couldn’t crumble out so much as a single, even partway helpful answer. So we drove quiet together, until I managed to tell Lyle the only thing I knew for certain.
Rules don’t bug me, I said. But with Mom and Dustin, I think it was the rule of not seeing the concert that made them want to go so bad.
I hear you, Ben, Lyle answered.
However it wound up, with Mom and Lyle not speaking, or you grounded, or Mom grouching on the phone to Grammie, I can’t exactly recall. What I do remember is that my dumb old neon light stick only worked for that one night. By the next morning, the color in the tube had turned to plain yuck-yellow.
The only reason I put it in my desk drawer and not my trash can was because it came from you, and I didn’t want to be caught without it, in case you ever asked.
WHEN I GET BACK to the motel room, Mallory’s found a squirt bottle of some kind of cleaner and a rag. I lie on the bed and watch as she squirts and rubs the rag over little corners of furniture, making faces if the rag picks up the smallest smudge of dirt.
“Your room is only slightly less filthy than mine,” she says. Squirt, squirt. Rub, rub. “In fact, my room had a big dead fly squashed to the window. On the inside. I had to call the front desk to get someone to remove it.”
“I’d have gone in and unstuck it if you’d asked,” I tell her.
She makes a face and says, “Eghck.”
Lyle tries to unpack his suitcase, but Mallory bracelets a hand around his wrist and tells him it’s safer to keep the clothes where they are. “Because there’s a high chance of catching bedbugs.”
“Even in the bureau drawers?” I ask.
“Dustmites, then,” she answers, and she starts into a story about how Channel Five did a special consumer report where they ranked all the motel chains in the U.S. from cleanest to dirtiest. Or at least they tried to, but as it turned out, all of them were filthy.
“Not all of them,” Lyle says.
“Every single one,” Mallory answers in a voice that won’t change its mind.
I ask if I can have some money for the pop machine in the hall and they both spin on me and say no. Then Lyle goes on about how bad pop is for a person’s teeth and Mallory tells what sounds like a made-up story about how the fizzes in pop chew away the lining of a person’s stomach.
You would have got mad, I bet, listening to Mallory’s story. She’s just a lady version of Lyle, I bet you’d say. Full of her rules and set in her habits, probably wishes there was a GCA, too. And in a way, you’re right. Even how Mal calls her voice mail and makes tiny little notes in her Filofax is exactly the same way that Lyle calls the hospital and makes tiny little notes in his Filofax. They make plans together, tapping pens against their chins.
“First the hospital,” says Lyle. “I’d like to get going as soon as possible.”
“Then we’ll find someplace for lunch,” Mallory adds. “And we’ll want to go back later this afternoon.”
“I’ve left Gina the number of where we’re staying, in case she calls in for her messages,” Lyle says, staring at the phone.
“Where do you think she is?” Mallory asks.
“Who knows? She’s not at work, she’s not at home, she’s not at the hospital. She’s completely undependable.” And Lyle cuts his pen through the air like he’s crossing Mom off a list of Dependable People.
Lying on the bed, I close my eyes and think about how you’d take all this attention. I didn’t ask you to visit me, is what I bet you’d say. It’s not my fault people are missing work and wasting time.
You’d say these things and you’d mean them, but I have a hunch that part of you wants us here, inside touching distance, even if you don’t want to answer for it. I never met anyone with less need for people than you, but not needing isn’t the same as not touching. It’s how you’ve been since I met you; half on the run and half hoping for the rescue, but then never exactly happy with the attention that a rescue brings.
ONE MOM GONE WAS bad. Two moms gone was too many. There was a while when the news wouldn’t stay with you, and you thought she’d be home at the end of the week or the month. It wasn’t until you realized Mom left us for permanent that you got working on a plan to leave too. Gina sent us a letter, you’d tell me as soon as I biked home. Last year, at the start of fifth grade, was when Lyle let me bike outside our neighborhood. I spent every afternoon that fall on your old Hotrocks six-speed, either coasting around town or exploring trails through Pinewoods, which is what it says it is, a stretch of woods, mostly pine.
You dragged behind me with your nose in Mom’s letter as I walked around the kitchen, hanging up my jacket and hunting the cupboard for snacks.
She says the sky’s better than a postcard. She says she doesn’t need her electric blanket and she’s sending it back. UPS. She says she learned how to make gazpacho. She says she’s moving into a condo only a mile from the beach, and she got herself a job as a vet’s assistant. She says when can we come out and visit?
Mom hates animals, I answered, except for it wasn’t true, but I liked imagining Mom’s new life as a big lie.
When are you going out there?
I’m not. She can come here, she knows where I live. Why, are you?
Hell, yeah. Soon as I get my driver’s license. I hate it here. This stupid town. Gina’s where all the action is. No wonder she got bored.
There’s action here.
If there is, I wouldn’t know. Dad’s learned more ways to say the word no than any other father in the neighborhood. If I have to hear him one more time—Not today, Dustin. Maybe next weekend, Dustin. We’ll talk about it after you’re finished being grounded, Dustin. … I’d be out of here in a second if I had choices.
You’re making Lyle out to be worse than he is.
I get my driver’s permit in six months. Then I’m taking off. Gina won’t care. I wouldn’t stay long, anyhow. Just till I made another plan.
You can’t drive there. I mean, you could, but it would take … a long time.
So?
And you don’t have a car.
Dogger says I can buy his car, cheap. I’m making real dollars at Pete’s Pizza.
Lyle’ll never let you go.
Lyle. Lyle’ll never let me go. Shheeez.
He won’t.
There’s this expression, Ben? About how some people can’t tell their ass from their elbow? Every time I think of that expression, it reminds me of you.
Up till that minute, it had been a regular you-and-me conversation, a bopping talk that wasn’t exactly right and not exactly wrong, either, but instant and easy like playing tennis against the wall with me as the wall but I was used to it.
Except sometimes you hit too hard—you did then—and my wall fell down and there was no way to bounce back.
> I stared at you, then lifted my juice to my mouth and drank it down in one long slow sip to the end.
It didn’t matter what you planned, I decided. Just as long as Lyle and me didn’t have to be part of it.
LYLE WANTS TO GET going to see you, and we’re out of the motel so fast it’s like we spun through a revolving door. Someplace between my run up and down the gravel hill I guess I lost my sweater, but Lyle doesn’t notice and Mallory doesn’t notice, and since it’s warm enough outside that I don’t realize I forgot it, there’s nothing to protect me from the hospital. I start to shiver as soon as we walk into the lobby.
“Where’s your sweater, Bennett?” Mallory asks.
“Forgot it,” I answer, looking around for a place to reheat. The top-down drive had been quick but liquefying hot, and I feel like I got hauled off the beach and stashed into a giant refrigerator full of sick people. They are everywhere, bumping their walkers or partnered up with nurses or sitting raggedy as missing socks in their wheelchairs.
“Third floor,” Lyle says, coming back from the information desk. “Gina’s up there already. Elevator or stairs?”
“Elevator,” Mallory says, and we head to it.
A cold hospital layer is starting to cling over the heat in my skin. I’m hot/cold/hot in rings moving out and out from the pit of me, like a radar. The rings stretch out and out and blip to the third floor. I’m sweating and shivering, so I start to jog in place, trying to even out my temperature.
“You okay?” Mallory asks. “Bennett?”
And Lyle goes, “Ben? Ben?”
Whatever they say next I don’t know because it’s lipped-over-me words and I’m listening to the squeak-tap of my sneakers on the hard hospital floor. I’m shivering but there’s sweat-prickers in my scalp.
Then Mallory has my hand and we’re walking together, through the automatic doors, back into the sun.
“It’s too cold in there,” I tell her. “I’m not ready to go in there.”
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