“We need to pause,” she says. “You know, I haven’t dashed around this much since I was a newsroom assistant. How about lunch? How about a cheeseburger or chicken nuggets, sound good, hey, Bennett?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Lyle stays behind, so it’s just her and me moving outside the radar range. Mallory’s heels tick over the pavement and she jingles her keys in one hand, but her other hand snaps mine palm to palm, firm fingers through my fingers. Her sparkly nails scratch over my knuckles like I’m her pet Chihuahua, but it is enough, holding her hand and loosening up in the heat.
Once we’re in the car, I feel better, and I ask if I can get a milk shake along with my cheeseburger.
ME AND MALLORY GOT off to a bad start, and we’re still making up for it. The fact of us both trying to smooth things over I take as a sign that we’ll come through all right. Lyle’d taken Mallory out a few times before, so when he invited her over for dinner, I knew it was a tester for Lyle to find out my opinion. Since Lyle works at home, he can spend the whole day fixing up a meal, which means a home-cooked dinner is not a bad idea, datewise. When I got home from school, good smells were thick in the air. I figured the night was kind of Mal’s tester of me, too, and I even took a shower and changed into a button-down without being asked.
I’d already seen Mallory on TV, so her clicks and sparkles weren’t a surprise. She was livelier than I’d counted on from a semifamous person, and her questions were easy lobs about school and friends; no curve balls to sneak me into talking about Mom.
Mallory’s own stories took longer, and I switched on and off paying attention. The main facts are that she ran away from home when she was sixteen to live in Paris, France, where she was a clothes model for magazines. She ran into some bad luck when she married a creepy French guy who used up her model money. She divorced the creep and she finished high school by mail, and then she took newspaper-reporting classes at some Frenchy school. She moved here when she got a job to be the weather lady on a cable channel I never heard of. She did such an awesome job that the big cheeses at Channel Five wanted her do their Sunday Consumer Edition. She landed the weekend spot after Craig Calhoon went to another TV station out west.
That’s when Mal got spooked and started going to Lyle. She figured everybody would think she couldn’t do the real news since she’d been a model and a weather lady. She needed help getting the quivers out of her voice, she told me, and to learn not to bust up crying when she got angry, or if her boss got angry, or if people wrote in that they liked Craig Calhoon better. Which they did, at first, because nobody likes changes.
But she included too many extra mini-stories about big shots she knew in Paris, which of course Lyle thought was so, so great. He kept saying, You were friends with her? You went to a party at his house? Once, when he was in the Air Force stationed in Hawaii, Lyle saw Jack Nicholson in a gift shop. That was almost twenty years ago, and Lyle still talks about it. I guess to him, movie stars are like the super-confident polar opposites of the people he has to shake the shyness out of all day.
From Paris to Lyle, I said at the end of the dinner, right before my favorite Lyle specialty, homemade peanut-butter brownies. And I don’t know, maybe I said it because it sounded like something you’d say, a crooked insult you might have flipped me from when I first came to your house. Then I felt bad, because Lyle’s face turned red and he started twirling his fork in his hand.
Ha ha ha, Lyle embarrass-laughed. From Paris to me. What’s my special charm, Mal? I keep asking you, and see? Now Ben wants to know too.
Dessert didn’t taste good after he said that. That’s one of the ways you and me are different: you stand guard by your smart-mouth remarks, but I want to turn them around and march them right back up inside me.
Guess you never read a single chapter of Speaking to Save Yourself, Mallory said to me, hard-voiced. Otherwise you wouldn’t poke fun.
Dustin calls that book the Bible for Babies, I said.
Lyle had cracked up when he’d heard Dustin call it that, but Mallory was wrong for the joke. She leaned forward, the points of her elbows pressed on the table and, with her chin socketed to her fist, checked me out long and hard, like it was the first real look at me she’d ever got.
Ignorant, she said finally. And I wouldn’t have thought so, from a first impression.
The silence tingled my cheeks and sucked out my appetite. I pushed my brownie over to Lyle and then, turning a shoulder against Mallory, I told him how Mrs. Adams, our recess monitor, just came back from her honeymoon in Paris, and she said that the sidewalks were full of dog poop.
“HOW ARE YOU DOING? Better, Bennett?”
“Better, Bennett,” I answer, and because it sounds funny I repeat it a couple more times in an outer-space voice until I see it’s kind of getting on Mal’s nerves and she tells me don’t talk with my mouth full.
“Thinking about seeing your mom … maybe it gave you a jitter jump?” she asks.
I plug in the last bite of cheeseburger before I tell Mallory that I don’t care if I ever saw my mom again for the rest of my life.
“Liar,” she answers. “Come on, finish chewing. You’re a sorry listener, I swear, Bennett.”
“I’m serious.” Except for I can’t tell if I believe it myself, since it closes up my throat to say.
Mallory sips her water and quietly says some words about Mom that Lyle might have cut her off from saying if he’d been here at burger place too.
“You never met my mom,” I remind her. “You don’t know what she’s like.”
“I know enough to form opinions,” Mallory answers. “And however nicely you cut it, she’s never been much of a mom to you.”
Mal’s right, I guess, but in a small way I think I should speak up for Mom. It’s hard to catch up with all the different ways I think about her, even after so much time away.
“However nice you cut it,” I say slow, “Mom couldn’t have stopped Dustin from doing what he did.”
“What are you talking about, stopped him? It was a mistake, what he did. An accident, Bennett.” Mallory spreads her hands wide to heaven, showing me, I guess, how nobody could have caught you, how you’d fallen through everybody’s helpless fingers.
“If you say so,” I tell her.
Mallory’s sunglasses are off and her eyes hold me to a better answer. Pretty eyes she’s got, so dark that the white parts look like glow-in-the-dark decals. She leans her face in close, serious.
“What makes you think that Dustin would want to hurt himself?”
“He wouldn’t want to,” I answer. “He just would.”
IT MUST HAVE BEEN some time right before or right after Mom left, that day we took bikes out to Pinewoods. Your bike actually belonged to Lyle and mine was the Hotrocks hand-me-down and neither of them fit us perfect, but they got us around.
The race was your suggestion. We’d biked into town for snacks, and you paid for everything. My mouth hurt in a good way from grape pop and two Eskimo Pies and handfuls of jawbreakers.
Let’s race, you said. Like a real race, like a marathon.
I said sure, why not? because even though you’d win, it was a day when your whipping me on a bike wouldn’t have made me mad. Not mad at all.
We shortcut behind the fire station and went off road. My bike frame was thick with knobby tires, better for the mud and long grass, and I couldn’t figure how you kept balance on those ruler-thin wheels and hanging over your handlebars like you were. I had to pedal fast to keep up, and my box of jawbreakers, fitted between my belt buckle and my stomach, rattled like voodoo.
Pinewoods is bike land, with good trails and just enough rocks and hills to make you feel like you’re Daniel Boone in the wilderness. Some of the trees along the trails are marked with red or blue or yellow dots. Blue is a good trail. Yellow cuts down a mountainside and is too steep. Red is for little kids.
You took yellow.
Dustin, I called. Hey, Dustin, your bike isn’t going to let
you. Yellow takes you all the way down the mountain.
Go red trail, then, you said, without looking back. That’s the safest. I’ll meet you at home.
But I knew your challenge when I heard it. That inside-out, you kind of challenge. I switched gears and pumped strong, holding you in sight just barely, you were treading so fast and bouncing hard into the rhythm of every slope and bump.
Yellow tree dots blurred past. I tried to ignore them as I kept up speed. We were jagging sidelong down the mountain, which I knew only from Lyle’s saying so ended somewhere over by the bakery outlet on the other side of town. Even with my hands triggered over the front and back brake pulls, I was feeling not-so-sure that I could stop myself if I needed. You weren’t checking or warning me, tour-guide style, about the rocks and gutters ahead. But I kept up and stayed quiet, my back pressed low and both sneaker laces coming untied and nothing to hear except the cracking twigs and rat-a-tat of my candy.
Your back tire caught the stick as you were skidding away from one of the pricker bushes that stuck up everywhere through the woods.
Dustin, your tire’s caught, I called. Stop—watch it! You can’t shift gears.
All my voice seemed to do was jump your speed. My eyes were trained down on the stick clacking through the spokes, and so when I raised my head, the shock gusted through me. There’d been no warning on the clean drop of mountainside that fell before us, steep as a ski slope and just as bare.
Dustin! I shouted. The sound of my voice made you pause without stopping, more like a hiccup between slow motion and freeze frame, and the next thing I watched you tip yourself straight down the mountain and let go of the handlebars, then raise your arms high like victory.
I braked so fast my stomach heaved. I watched as you waterspouted over your bike, which kicked away from you like a wild pony before smashing onto its side. Your arms and legs churned the air as you punched up extra height before the spit of the next instant knocked you all the way back down to the ground. It happened so quick I had trouble processing that it happened at all.
I ditched my bike and ran to where you had rolled, flat on your back with your eyes on the sky.
Why’d you do that? I shouted, collapsing to my hands and knees beside you. Why’d you let go? The dusty gold sunlight and creaky pine needles closed too calm around my thumping heart and questions. Still I kept asking.
Why? Why, Dustin?
You scowled as you inched up on your elbows. Maybe the bike got away from me, you said. Then in an undertow of breath, you told me someone called your name.
That was me! I was saying to stop, to get the stick out of your back wheel.
You nodded, but your eyes fixed steady on the ultrablue sky. You held yourself to the same position for so long I began coughing just to jump-start your attention.
Slowly you brushed yourself up to your feet and went to collect your bike.
I watched as you straightened her out and pulled the stick from where it was still lodged in the back-wheel spokes.
You did that on purpose, didn’t you? I wanted to shout. You just wanted to test how it would feel to drop down. The only reason you did that was to see if you could, right? Right?
And jealousy itched at my skin, thinking of how good it must feel to fall so free, even while I could have punched you for it, for scaring me so bad.
I swear you must have read my thoughts when you turned and smiled, a goofy, tooth-filled clown smile. We were a pair, a pair of adventurers and close as real brothers, in spite of what you’d said before.
Hey, Ben, what’s brown and sticky? You waved the stick in the air. Get it?
I laughed too hard and gave you some jawbreakers for the long ride home.
MALLORY KEEPS ASKING IF I’m feeling okay now, and I keep answering yeah, although I guess the day is starting to wear on me. I can’t stop yawning.
“Wait here,” she says as we drive up to the hospital. She ducks in and after a long time she comes back with Lyle and Mom. I’m glad I didn’t have to be around for the Mallory-to-Mom introductions.
“Ben!” Mom yells. “Come here and give me a hug!” She holds out her arms.
I put my fingers on the door handle and then decide on second thought that I’ll just stay put and let the hug come to me. Some of my shivering’s back, and I’m not even in the lobby.
Mom looks different; her face is tan and her hair is lawn-mowed short. She’s wearing a pink sleeveless shirt and pink globe earrings, and I realize you’re right, her ears do stick out.
When I lean out of the car to hug her, I smell the mint off her chewing gum.
“What’s on your arm?” I ask.
“Smoker’s patch. I’m quitting. Well, I’m trying.”
“That’s great. Lyle says cigarettes’ll destroy you.”
“The Surgeon General said it first.” The look in Mom’s eye tells me that Lyle’s warning wasn’t the exactly right thing to come out of my mouth.
“Look.” I stick out my wrist. “I’ve got on my watch.”
She nods but her eyes barely move to it, and I think maybe I should have got out of the car and hugged her when I’d had the chance. We’ve started off on the wrong foot, Lyle would say.
“Your mother’s coming by the motel later, to take you out to dinner,” Lyle tells me. “If that’s all right by you, Ben.”
“All right,” I say.
“I’ve got a nice place picked out.” Mom smiles. “Reservations at eight.”
“That’s awfully late for dinner,” Lyle says.
“It’s all right,” I say, and Mom says, “No, it’s not,” both of us answering Lyle, but it sounds like Mom’s answering me, and then we kind of laugh and Lyle says, “Hey, do what you want,” in a voice that doesn’t really mean it.
Mallory slips into the driver’s seat and uses too much engine noise revving up.
“Let’s get going,” she calls. She glosses on some glimmery lipstick and checks her sunglasses in the rearview, being Very Special, but I know she’s just edgy, tripped up in the tangle of all these wrong-footed starts.
I try to climb into the backseat, but Lyle stops me. He squeezes in the front and pulls me over his lap.
I’m way too big to sit in people’s laps, but I figure since we’re so far away from school and nobody will see me, I’ll let him.
Mom crosses her arms to her chest and steps up on the curb and looks at us in the car. “Wow, regular little family,” she says, and she sounds so all alone, I half-wish somebody would say something to make her feel more included. Nobody does.
Mallory vrooms the engine again. “Nice to meet you, Gina,” she says in her anchorwoman’s voice.
“I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty,” Mom says with eyes on me only. “We’re going someplace really special, my favorite restaurant just for you, Ben. So wear a coat and tie.”
WHEN MOM WAS READY for a move, I knew her symptoms. I had a head start on you and Lyle, since it was all the same stuff as Before. The afternoon naps and long walks, the waking up or coming home at dinnertime with eyes red-simmered from tears. Or she’d go out shopping for hours and return with a foot massager or new wineglasses or an atlas. Weird stuff. Same patterns that made me mad and careful both. I didn’t want to topple her mood by asking her about it, but I didn’t want her to think I couldn’t tell she was restless and straining to go someplace new, someplace where her old problems wouldn’t find her.
One afternoon, I’d caught her staring out the kitchen window with eyes more hopeless than they should have been from a view of recycling bags and tomato vines.
It’s so difficult, she sniffled when I made myself ask her what was wrong. I guess I’m just a difficult woman. I guess there’s just no pleasing me some days. …
You used to say that Before, I reminded her. Every time, before a move, you would say that to Dad.
Maybe you’re right and maybe you’re wrong, she answered, kind of absent-minded, like right or wrong didn’t even matter.
And D
ad followed you wherever you went.
Frank’s a follower by nature. I wish Lyle—
Lyle’s lived here a long time. He won’t go anywhere else, I said. And me neither, almost tacked on, except for I couldn’t. Instead I asked her if she wanted to get back with Dad.
No, no, Mom answered. What’s past is final. It’s only lately I wonder how right I am for here. There’s got to be more than some little nothing nowhere town, some little nothing nowhere life.
Well, count me out, I almost said, trying again. But the words were too Aquaman soft for the power of the feeling trapped inside me. What I said was, Guess I’ll go up and do my homework.
In chapter five, “Relax, Recall, Respond,” of Lyle’s book, there’s a diagram of a person with arrows labeling the abdominal muscles and diaphragm and trachea. If you want to get your words out right, Lyle’s book explains, then all these parts of your body have to be unrestricted.
In the bathroom mirror or on the bus, I practiced unrestricting myself, preparing for Mom.
Lyle’s house has a backyard and a waffle maker. My room is the exact right color blue, I told my reflection. I watched my teeth and tongue and the movements of my lips and I practiced saying whatever came to mind. I’m in my third year at the same school. My fort’s here, in the branches of the same tree where I carved BEN. It’s my secret fort, where I stash my compass and the naked lady coasters I took from King Plaza.
Besides, Lyle’s not going anywhere. Not. Going. Anywhere.
Relax, recall, respond. It’s all about keeping yourself in charge of your thoughts and throat when the tension turns high. Lyle’s main point is that you can’t squeeze up or you’ll run out of air. That breathing is everything.
So I was ready for her, that night when she came into my bedroom to give me her piece. She sat at the foot of my bed and rested a heavy hand on my leg and began to talk like she was telling me some baby bedtime story, a story about leaving for a while, just her and me, getting out of this little town to see the world. I kept my palms flat over my abdomen and measured the slow fill and drain of my breath.
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