“I was so worried,” she blurted out, unable to help herself.
He pushed right past her.
“Everything okay, Leon?” she asked as he tore up to his room. “You all right, Leon?”
“Fine,” he said, not looking back.
“I’m glad you’re home,” she called up the stairs. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
It was all okay, Eve told herself. After all that, it was just her worried mind getting the better of her. The things I put myself through, she thought. Too much. Just too much.
* * *
—
The next morning there was a bundle of three-by-five black-and-white photos, like a double deck of oversized playing cards, wedged inside the front screen door. Eve brought it into the kitchen, where they were all having cereal.
“Your pictures,” she said, placing the packet on the table.
Leon shot up with his half-empty bowl and headed for the sink.
“Leon?” she said. “How was everything last night? Everything okay?”
“I’m going to Mike’s.”
“Wait. Tell me about it. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Leon said. “Leave me alone.”
“We want to hear,” Eve said.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Leon started out the back door.
“You have ballet class tonight, don’t forget,” Eve called after him.
“I’m not going,” he called back.
“What?” She was instantly up and following him.
“I’m not going,” he said again. “I quit.”
“You can’t quit,” she said. “What are you talking about? You’re not quitting.”
“I quit,” he said. “I quit. I’m going to Mike’s.”
They were standing outside now, Leon in the driveway with one foot up on his bike pedal, Eve in her nightgown beside him.
“Don’t quit, Leon. You don’t want to quit.”
“I do want to quit! I do!”
René and Jayne were watching out the kitchen window. Leon was suddenly wiping tears from the naked red rims of his eyes, shaking all over.
“I’m not going to ballet anymore, no matter what you say! I quit!”
Eve just looked at him, her body angled in confusion and despair.
“Mrs. G won’t like it,” she said. Then, quietly: “Is there something you want to tell me, Leon?”
“No,” he said. “Just leave me alone. Please. Please. I just need to be left alone. I’m going to Mike’s.”
And he pushed down on his bike pedal and slowly curved out of the driveway and down the road, riding away, ambling on his bike in a way they’d never seen him do before, like an old man.
* * *
—
Eve took the photos along to ballet class, but Mrs. G wasn’t impressed.
“Look at that extension,” she said to René. “Phooey. You can do better than that.” René grimaced, but Mrs. G just kept going. “There’s nothing worth using, Eve. I don’t know about that photographer,” she added. “The pictures he took of the studio were no good, either.”
Eve didn’t say anything at first. Then she said, “I don’t know a thing about him.”
“Well, now you know one thing,” Mrs. G said. “You know he can’t take a picture worth a hoot!” She laughed, but Eve just shook her head. “Good thing he didn’t charge you for those.”
Eve humphed.
“Time for class,” Mrs. G said. “Where’s Leon?”
“He’s not coming,” Eve said. “He says he’s quitting, he’s not dancing anymore.”
“What?” Mrs. G was flummoxed. “Why?”
“He didn’t say why. He’s just done with it. That’s all. He won’t talk to me.”
“Boys,” Mrs. G sighed. “It’s a crying shame. It’s a crime, really.”
“He seems set on it. I guess he’s been through enough.”
“It’s his decision. It’s got to be. But you tell him I want him to come back. I’ll miss him too much if he’s not in class. He’s my buddy. He’s like the star of the show around here.”
“I know it,” Eve said. “I’ll tell him, but I don’t think it’s going to make any difference.”
“Tell him anyway,” Mrs. G said. Then she took René by the hand. “Come on, René. Time to dance.”
And just like that, René was dancing and Leon was not.
* * *
—
“We didn’t develop any film,” Leon said many decades later, well past anyone’s idea of his prime, back pain confining him to life in an easy chair in front of the television. He scoffed at the idea. “He attacked me,” Leon said. “But I fought him. Yeah. I fought him off. I don’t want to talk about it.”
It was clear enough. No one believed that, at fourteen, Leon could have dominated that grown man. And recently it had surfaced that, way back then, not long after the night Leon had disappeared with him, a group of men had banded together to threaten the photographer, to drive him out of town.
“If I’d known,” Eve said pitifully, her once thick, auburn hair reduced to wisps of silver, “I never would have let you—”
“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Leon said sharply, ending things. “Is that all right with you?”
So, though they knew for certain that something had happened to Leon that night, out of consideration, no one spoke of it. And they were each set adrift, left to imagine the possibilities.
And after something like that—something that changed everything—René could see that her childhood belief in John the Apostle’s moon turning to blood was simply, criminally, understated and insufficient. Why hadn’t it exploded or fallen from the sky? And the ancient story of Prometheus having his liver pecked away endlessly by a circling eagle, having it grow back daily in order that the torment could be experienced as continuous, seemed merely accurate, descriptive; while being turned into a pillar of salt, to be washed away in the next rain, felt like benevolence, like something one might wish for.
And since, even all those years later, the moon persisted in hanging, shimmering silver in the deep night sky, it seemed that only the miraculous end to the tale of Lazarus—who’d died because Jesus had tarried in coming to his aid but, after being dead for many days, had been revived by Jesus’s tears and prayers, brought back to life complete and strong and whole—only the miracle, the restoration, the reigniting of flesh and spirit, remained alien to experience, taking its place outside of even hope, and could be finally understood as it was, exempt from the realm of things that might just come to pass.
Part Four
27
Means to an End
Leon turned fifteen, got his driver’s license, and disappeared. When he wasn’t cruising up and down Mount Rushmore Road in the VW bus, he’d be over at an unsupervised friend’s house, drinking from the liquor cabinet, relaxing.
He’d come home to an empty house—with René at ballet, Jayne at a friend’s, and Eve either at Mrs. G’s, working on dance routines for the new school, or downtown doing alterations. Since there was no one around, he didn’t have to worry about staggering or slurring his speech. He’d just lie on the couch with his shirt off, watching TV, drifting in and out of sleep, or stumble up to his room and close the door.
And in June, when Al announced that they’d all be going on a cross-country trip to visit their aunt in Seattle, Leon said he was staying home.
“Of course you’re coming with us,” Eve said.
“I’m not going,” Leon said.
“Don’t be silly.”
“Suit yourself,” Al said.
So there was a call to Emma, and arrangements were made.
“I just hope she can handle him,” Eve said as they pulled out of the driveway, waving at the two of them.
They were sta
nding on the front lawn—Emma calling out and blowing kisses, Leon towering over her, lifting a hand, expressionless.
“Not much to do about it,” Eve sighed as they started down Clark Street.
“That’s the ticket,” Al said cheerily. “We’re on the road now. Right, girls?”
So Leon stayed home as the rest of the family made their way west—stopping in Idaho to swim and eat smoked fish, buying huge, ripe cherries at roadside stands, building a fire and folding down the bed in the camper each night while Eve made hot dogs and beans on the Coleman stove, until finally, they pulled into their aunt’s driveway. She had fondue waiting for them, a color-coded, enameled fondue fork for each person. René and Jayne chose their colors, then skewered and cooked raw beef slices in the hot pot, raising their eyebrows at each other, giddy. And the next morning they stood together on their aunt’s terrace, taking in the view over Puget Sound, until they were all ready to drive downtown, to stand in line for the Space Needle—all but Leon.
* * *
—
Leon always said that from the very first time he took a drink of whiskey, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. And though, in general, he was adept at making himself disappear in order to accomplish his goal, still he’d surface from time to time. The school would call: Leon was flunking all his classes, or Leon had been caught drilling a peephole into the girls’ locker room, or Leon was smoking on school property. He’d be suspended. Or a new, older friend of his none of them had ever seen before would come over, not saying hello or taking off his muddy boots, and the two of them would head up to Leon’s room for a minute. Then the friend would turn around and leave.
“What was that about?” Eve would say.
“Nothing. He has to go to work. I’m going to Phil’s.”
“No, you’re not.”
“We’re working on a project,” Leon would say over his shoulder on his way out the door. “I’ve gotta go or I won’t get credit.”
Eve would shake her head, then go back to straightening up the kitchen, or loading the washing machine, or practicing the new steps Mrs. G had just given her for her school in Belle Fourche.
And, of course, when Al came home, they’d go round and round.
“You make sure Leon gets a haircut,” Al would start.
“I don’t know what in the hell you think you’re talking about,” Eve would say. “Tell him yourself.”
Because, though Leon had finally stopped pulling out his hair, now he was growing it long, and with hair past his shoulders and his perennially red, glassy eyes staring into some distance none of the rest of them could see, he was looking even less like himself than he had when his eyebrows and eyelashes were missing.
“Nobody wants to see you like that,” Al would tell him. “It’s disrespectful. To yourself and everyone else.”
But that would be it. Leon was suddenly taller than Al and filling out. He had the broad chest and chiseled features of a movie star, and he was not getting a haircut.
“He looks like a goddamn hippie,” Al would say.
“Why can’t you say he looks nice? Just once,” Eve would fume.
“I think he looks like Jesus,” Emma would put in if she was visiting. “Jesus had long hair, you know, but that was the style of the time. He wasn’t trying to be rebellious.”
But nothing made any difference to Leon. He was gone. He was up in his room, or at a friend’s house, or dozing on the couch, and when it came to trying to reach him, every attempt only reconfirmed the hopelessness of the idea.
* * *
—
“What in the world?” Al said. “Think he’s been here all night?”
They’d got up to find Leon passed out on the couch in the family room, still in his jeans and T-shirt from the day before, his boots right up on the sofa cushions, the TV hot to the touch, running through the morning shows.
“How the hell should I know.” Eve switched off the television.
Al shook him. “Get up, Leon.”
Leon moaned.
“Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he doesn’t feel well. Ever think of that?” Eve said.
“He’s going to get himself kicked out of school for good. I know that much.”
Eve creased her eyebrows. “Come on, Leon,” she pleaded, bending to jostle him. “Come on, honey.”
“What?” Leon said, struggling up from what might as well have been somewhere deep underground.
“Time for school,” Eve said.
“No,” Leon groaned. “I’m not going. I don’t feel good.”
“Get up, Leon,” Al said again.
Leon rolled his eyes and didn’t answer.
“I said, Get up!” Al threatened, giving the sofa a hard kick, rattling the joints. “Right now!”
“Or what?” Leon muttered. “Just go ahead and do whatever you’re gonna do to me. I’m not getting up.” And with that, he turned over, rearranged the sofa pillow under his head, and went back to sleep.
“Well, that’s just right,” Al said, looking at Eve. “I got a goddamn drunk Indian living in my house. That’s just dandy.” And he turned and left the room.
Then Eve found the baggie of pot in Leon’s sock drawer and decided that was something she could never tell Al about, ever. She waited until he’d left town again before confronting Leon.
“It’s not mine,” Leon said. “Maybe Mike left it in there. Leave me alone. I have no idea whose it is. I’ve never seen it before.”
“However it got there,” Eve said, shaking the buds and seeds out of the plastic bag and into the toilet, “that’s the end of it. You have to promise me that much.”
“Okay,” Leon said, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about ’cause it’s not mine.” And he went back into his room and shut the door.
So, since he was failing all of his tenth-grade classes and had been suspended so many times that he was in danger of expulsion, since he was never around and no one ever knew where he was or what he was doing, since he was stashing pot in his room and lying about it, and since he seemed to not care that he was throwing his life away, or give a good goddamn about what anyone else thought about anything anymore, they had to do something. And what they decided to do came from none other than Doc Jensen, who told Eve about a Catholic boarding school for boys in Colorado.
“More like a military school,” Jensen said. “They’ll teach him discipline, you can count on that. He’ll graduate from high school even if they have to handcuff him to a desk.” And Jensen laughed, which Eve found thoughtless and arrogant, cruel. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I was just like him.”
It was meant as an apology, but Eve didn’t find it comforting, especially since Jensen freely admitted to having spent a good deal of his life as a raving alcoholic and, if you could believe what you heard, had been kicked out of more practices than anyone who depended on him cared to count.
But Al agreed with the idea, and Eve didn’t see any alternative, so before they could turn around twice, Leon had a ride with one of Al’s cattleman friends to Denver. The Brothers of the Order of Saint Francis would pick him up at the other end. And just like that, just naturally, as if they’d all simply awakened one morning to a change they’d known was coming—like looking out to see the first snowfall, or to find winter suddenly breaking, snow melting away, water running whichever direction was downhill in little streams—just like that, Leon was packed up and loaded into a stranger’s car. He rolled away one early morning without even saying goodbye.
28
Over Like Dominoes
Eve and Al had been looking for a home to buy so they wouldn’t have to keep throwing their money away on rent, but it wasn’t until after Leon had been sent off to Colorado that Al found the perfect one: a brick-and-stone Tudor on a corner lot of the wide, green expanse of Pine Boulevard,
where the doctors and lawyers and orthodontists lived. The boulevard angled uphill from town, a large grassy median dividing one side of the street from the other, running the entire length, right up into the foothills. Though there were the occasional pines and elms, even a stand of paper birches here and there, for the most part it was lined with tall cottonwoods—the thick, knotty trunks seeming to contradict the aspirational, shimmering branches, which extended and spread, leaves sparkling in the air.
The house had high ceilings with decorative crown moldings, built-in cabinets, oversized picture windows, a library, and two fireplaces. Jayne would have the bedroom looking out over the side yard, where a weeping willow bobbed and rustled in the breeze. René would have the tiny, fairy-tale room set into one of the eaves, with the slanted ceiling and the gingerbread-cottage windows that were so small and low she’d have to kneel down to see out past the driveway to the manicured back lawn. There was the master bedroom for Eve and Al, plus an empty room that would have been Leon’s but that Eve set up as a guest room, with two twin beds.
They moved in, and in the unfamiliar darkness René began to wander, woozy with sleep in the middle of the night, through the wide upstairs hallway to the unoccupied guest room, where she’d collapse onto one of the beds, puzzling about where Leon might be and what it was, exactly, that went missing when someone went away. Was it a look, a gesture, a simple inflection? How could something so intricately entwined, so deeply intermixed in the ebb and flow of every day that it didn’t even bear notice, just up and disappear?
Sometimes she’d linger in the dark near the wrought-iron rail, where the upstairs landing fell away to the first floor, and hear music suddenly rising through the stairwell. It seemed that someone was downstairs, playing Eve’s organ, and René would quickly turn to check that Eve was still in her bed, asleep. Confirming that, she’d stand spellbound, sensing that the music was coming to her from some imperceptible parallel realm, pouring out for her through some tear in the normal fabric of things.
The Distance Home Page 18