“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”
He looked up sharply and opened his mouth as if to speak, then just nodded and turned to go. As he walked down the steps, I took a deep breath. My legs wobbled at the thought of that wad sunk in the right pocket of his trousers. And to think I’d held it in my hands. Fucking Frenchy.
At the bottom, he stopped and looked back. I had a fleeting hope he might ask if I wanted to keep it anyway for being such a great guy.
No such luck.
“Stewart doesn’t know I came here tonight.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Bolger. I know how to keep a secret.”
We didn’t say anything else. I watched him get back into his car, then I turned off the light and shut the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Stewart was quiet the next morning when he picked me up for school. He gave a smile when I got in, though, and I could see the relief in his eyes that I’d changed my mind. A few strands of gray hair from his wig had come loose and were hanging down over his face. Between that and the vestiges of Friday’s bruises, he looked more bedraggled than ever. It was two weeks now since he’d started wearing that goddam costume to school. Of course, at this point it had become normal looking. In fact, I had trouble picturing him without it.
We didn’t say much at lunchtime. We just sat eating while people glanced our way and whispered about the fight. The whole school had heard about it by now, or at least some version of it—the story seemed to change by the hour. By lunchtime, Stewart and I had singlehandedly wiped the Pokers out and taken on half the state police before finally succumbing to tear gas and stun grenades. Some even whispered that Stewart had put Scott in the hospital.
The Pokers weren’t in school to get their side of the story out there. They were gone for the week. Unlike Stewart, they weren’t getting a delay on their suspensions. I almost thought it was unfair. Almost.
I should’ve enjoyed it more, but I was distracted. And not just by Stewart.
It had come upon me in the middle of the night. Stage fright—the same kind of fear that had visited me after the audition, when I realized I might actually get cast, only this was ten times worse. Stewart’s talk of it to the other cast members on Saturday must have jinxed me. Of course, everyone telling me how nervous I must be didn’t help.
It came in the form of a nightmare. There I was, onstage with Stewart and Stacey and Quentin and everyone else in front of a packed audience. Everything was going smoothly until it came to me. I opened my mouth to say my first line, but nothing came out. I tried again. Same thing. The others were looking at me now, pissed. The crowd started murmuring. But no matter how loud I screamed, it was no good—nothing but silence, a total vacuum. It was as if someone had pointed a remote at me and pressed the mute button.
Which was exactly what had happened. The crowd’s muttering and laughing stopped, and when I finally got the courage to turn and look, the audience had disappeared except for one figure in the shadows. Then the house lights came on, and there he was—my father—standing with the big black TV clicker in his hand pointed right at me.
I’d actually forgotten about the dream until right in the middle of second period, when it all came rushing back. The next thing I knew, I was thinking about the play, about screwing up. Screwing up big. Why wouldn’t I? After all, I was me.
I wanted to tell Stewart, but I didn’t. Not because I was scared of admitting it, but because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having been right about me.
“So,” he said, right before the bell rang, “I got to spend an hour in Bryant’s office this morning.”
“Really? What for?”
“Just a friendly chat. A little bit of this, a little bit of that.” He glanced over at me with this nasty sort of look. “Actually, it was quite the inquisition. Under that mellow shell, he’s cunning.”
“So did you talk to him?” I tried to hide my excitement. I couldn’t help it. I just felt this huge sense of relief. “Did you tell him?”
“Of course not.” He frowned. “I just want to know—why did you put him up to it? I thought we had an agreement.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t tell him shit, Stewart.”
He stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “I believe you. It was probably Mrs. Masure, the bitch. I’ll find out. Not that it matters. I didn’t tell him anything anyway.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should.”
He blinked and looked away.
“Fuck it.” I looked down at my watch as the bell rang. “Now I’ve got to go see Bryant.”
Stewart laughed. “Quite a pair, aren’t we?”
“So this is it, huh?” Bryant said. “Coming down to the wire.”
“Something like that.” I leaned back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling.
“Nervous?”
“A little, maybe.” I proceeded to tell him about my nightmare.
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s some dream. You’ll probably have a few more stress dreams before this is all over.” He paused. “Do you dream about your father often?”
“So, I hear you had Stewart in this morning,” I replied.
He hesitated, then laughed. He knew I was dodging. “Yeah, finally got to spend some quality time together. We had quite a conversation. Told you about it, did he?”
I snorted. “He said you really grilled him.”
Bryant shrugged. “I did my job. Asked him a few questions, chatted about the play, about school. Same sort of stuff we talked about at your first visit.”
“How’d he do?”
“Fine. He seems tired, a bit flat maybe. But he said all the things I would expect to hear.”
“So he seemed okay to you, then?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” His look sharpened. “You know him better than anyone. What do you think?”
“You asked me that last time.” I stared down at my feet. The sole was starting to detach from the tip of my right sneaker. Cheap-ass Payless shoes.
“And you said everything was fine.”
“I’ll just be glad when the play’s finally over.”
“I understand you two had a pretty tough day last Friday. Some trouble in the cafeteria, a scuffle in rehearsal, then that whole business in the parking lot afterward.”
“So that’s why you called him in.”
Bryant smiled. “You never answered my question before.”
“Which one?”
“About your father. Do you dream about him a lot?”
“Never. Well, except for last night.”
“Never?” he said. He didn’t say it in a nasty way, really, but I felt my hackles rise. “It must have been hard seeing him there, then.”
“I don’t know. He was pretty far away. I didn’t really get a good look at him.”
“What do you miss most about him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Let’s try this—what do you remember most?”
Fucking Bryant.
“I don’t know,” I said, louder now. “In fact, you want to know the truth? Sometimes I can’t even remember what he looks like. I close my eyes and try to see him, but I can’t. Not the real him. It’s ridiculous. It’s only been a few months, and I have to look at a photograph to remember my own fucking father. I mean, how pathetic is that?”
My voice was shaking, my eyes were watering, so I shut the hell up. I’d already gotten choked up on Saturday. And now, twice in three days. So lame. Bryant waited, letting me regroup before speaking.
“That’s pretty normal, Gerry. You shouldn’t feel upset. You shouldn’t worry about it, either. It’ll start coming back. When you’re ready, it’ll come back.”
“I don’t even know if I want it to. Those last few months—everything got spoiled. But that’s the way it always is, right? Anything you have that’s good, something will come along and just fuck it up.”
“It certainly seems that way sometimes.”
; “Seems? Screw ‘seems.’ It will, trust me.”
“Maybe. Yet we keep on trying. Why do you think that is?”
“ ’Cause we’re all stupid. Or crazy.”
Bryant got a laugh out of that one.
“I don’t think you really believe all that,” he said. “I can tell the true cynics—you’re not one of them.”
“Really? So, what am I, then? What’s the diagnosis, Gerry?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “You’re a worrier. You worry about everything. Even the things you can’t control. Especially the things you can’t control.”
“Well, if I could control them, then I wouldn’t need to worry. Right?”
“That’s one view. On the other hand, if you can’t control them, then what’s the point?”
“Yeah, well, that sounds good in theory, but it doesn’t mean squat in real life,” I muttered. He nodded a few times. “So,” I said. I wanted to change the subject. “Guess you deal with a lot of screwed-up kids, huh?”
Bryant didn’t answer. He just gave me that Zen smile of his.
“Depression?” I asked. “You see depression a lot?”
“Yes. Too much of it.”
“Tough to treat, I bet.”
“It can be. Sometimes it’s just a matter of time and a lot of talking. The person’s just going through a phase. Like you said before, right?”
I laughed. “Yeah, that happens. But what about when it’s really bad? What do you do then? Drugs, right? Antidepressants, that sort of thing?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about other things?” I asked. “Really crazy things? Like, I don’t know, hearing voices, imagining things that aren’t real?”
“Well, those are pretty serious symptoms, indicating some degree of psychosis. Those cases wouldn’t be handled by this office.”
He hesitated, then fixed me with a smile. I held my breath, afraid of what was coming.
“Are you hearing voices, Gerry?”
I shook my head. “God, no.”
He paused again. “Did your father?”
“No. I don’t think so. I mean, I think he heard things, but they weren’t make-believe. They were real. Or at least, they had been. He just couldn’t stop remembering.”
“I knew your father,” he said. “We went to high school together, actually. Right here in Gilliam. Not too well—he was a couple years behind me—but I used to see him around. A pretty quiet guy. Friendly. All hot to join the army.”
“Yeah. Served six years. Then stayed on after in the National Guard.”
“He became a mechanic in town after he left the army, right?”
“Well, he tried to repair things. Not very good at it, though. Least, that’s what they tell me. I don’t think he was that into it. He just wanted to be a soldier.”
Bryant shrugged. “He fixed my car four years ago. It still works.”
“You’re one of the lucky ones, I guess.”
He gave a little laugh, then looked back at me. “He was a decent man, Gerry.”
“Yeah, I suppose he was.”
He looked at his watch. “So, good luck this weekend. Break a leg, right?”
I laughed. “Thanks,” I said, getting up. “So you coming or what?”
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “I’ll be there.”
CHAPTERR TWENTY-FIVE
Stewart sang. I watched him from the wings, Kaela and I together, with the house lights down and most of the stage lights dimmed as well, with only the blues and reds and greens still shining, so that the stage took on the look of a moonlit night, just like it would tomorrow night during the real thing. He and Stacey moved slowly, almost dancing around each other in a hypnotic circle—Don, singing his love to Aldonza, breaking through her resistance bit by bit; Aldonza, already broken by life, trying not to give in to any kind of hope as the wacky old knight sang “The Impossible Dream.”
No, Stacey hadn’t changed her mind about Stewart, not even after a week of dress rehearsals, but it was what the scene called for. So every afternoon she came through, because even though she didn’t love him, she loved the performance. I don’t even know if, deep down, Stewart actually loved her, but it was always real enough for him in its own way.
Funny how the scene I’d first hated most had ended up becoming my favorite. Maybe it was because it was one of the rare sections of the play where I got a break. Onstage—especially now in dress rehearsals, with parents and teachers stopping by to get a sneak preview—I was usually so worried I’d forget a line or miss a cue that it was hard to relax.
“He sounds so good,” Kaela whispered.
“Better than ever.”
It was true. No matter how much Stewart had pulled back from the cast, from school, even from me, his voice was always pure and present—especially during this scene. All the stress, all the suffering that hovered in his eyes like a dark cloud seemed to clear out as soon as Franco began playing from his spot at the base of the stage. Maybe that was why I loved the scene so much.
“It’s hard to believe someone in so much pain can create something so beautiful,” she murmured.
I watched him weave in his armor. “He’s just wounded. A wounded soldier.”
We looked at each other for a moment, then she put her arms around my waist and laid her head against my chest. I brought my hand up and felt the softness of her hair. The lights, the music, the feeling of her against me—it was a perfect moment. I thought how funny it was that the sound of Stewart singing helped bring me to a place where I forgot all about him. I didn’t want to let go of her. But everything ends.
Stewart and Stacey finished the song and we made our way through the rest of the afternoon without too many problems. It was our last dress rehearsal, and as the final notes of Franco’s piano faded, Ms. Vale called us all onto the stage.
“Very good,” she said. She was quiet, calm, a big change from the fiery woman who had driven us for weeks. “Not perfect. But as you all know, a flawless dress rehearsal is bad luck.”
She continued her pep talk, telling us how proud she was, how inspired she was by our talent and devotion. She said all the right things, and we responded, sharing smiles and good feelings, as if we knew this would be our last chance to be together this way before it was all over. It was so quiet in the auditorium, so peaceful in a way I’d never felt before, and I realized it was really going to happen. We were going to pull it off.
“So when this is all over,” I said, “we’re going to celebrate, right?”
We’d just pulled into my driveway after a quiet ride home. After the dress rehearsal, I was in a good mood for a change. I thought maybe I could coax one out of Stewart too. Like he always used to do for me.
“It’s not over yet.” He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “Besides, tomorrow is the celebration. And Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. Each performance is its own creation, its own reward. What comes after is nothing. Try to remember that, will you?”
“Oh, come on, Stewart. ‘What comes after is nothing?’ What about a new start? We could all use one.”
He stared out over the steering wheel. “Good-bye, Sancho.”
“Yeah, right. Whatever.”
And that was it. I got out and watched him take off in the Volvo.
“Put it away, put it away.” I waved a hand in front of my face. Doing that made me feel better because it made me laugh, because it was so silly and weird, and because it made me laugh at him, and that’s what I suddenly needed to do.
I went inside and made a sandwich. Like the laughing, it made me feel better, so I made another one. Then I heard a knock at the door.
“Yeah?” I said, opening the door to a vaguely familiar man. It wasn’t until he smiled that it really hit me. “Holy shit.”
It was Ralph. Sort of.
“Hey, bro. Mind if I come in?”
The mullet was gone, along with the patchy facial hair and cheesy mustache. Even the skinny-legged jeans were gone, replaced
by a pair of chinos. Tacky, I guess, but an improvement. I think he’d even brushed his teeth.
“Jesus, Ralph, I didn’t even recognize you.”
He flashed a smile. “Can I come in?” he repeated.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping aside to let him in. “Mom should be home pretty soon.”
“Yeah, I just talked to her. She invited me to join you guys for supper.”
“Wait till she sees you.”
“Yeah, I told her I had a surprise for her. That’s why she let me come over.”
“So what the hell, Ralph? You go on one of those makeover shows or something?”
“Aw, fuck no,” he said. “Just felt like it. Trying to make some changes, that’s all.”
“Changes, huh?”
He sat down at the kitchen table. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about things ever since that day you called me a loser.”
“Ralph, I told you I was sorry about that.”
“Well, it’s not like I didn’t really know it, Frenchy. But it wasn’t that. Not completely. It was that nutty friend of yours. All his talk a few weeks ago at dinner, all that crazy shit about how to treat a lady, and trying to make the best of things. Being a gentleman. Your mother liked it, I could see that. So I was out in the woods last weekend, after I seen you, waiting in my stand, freezing my ass off, and in the middle of it all, I decided.”
He paused, his lips tight, as if he were holding back a grin. I knew he was trying to be all dramatic, waiting for me to ask, so I played along.
“Decided what?”
“I’m going back to school.”
“What school?”
“Jesus Christ, culinary school. Remember?”
“Oh yeah. That’s cool.”
“Damn right. I’m going to start back in next semester. Want to have my own little restaurant someday.”
“That’s great, Ralph,” I said. I meant it too. “But I don’t know if Stewart’s the best guy to take advice from.”
“It’s not a matter of advice, Frenchy. It’s inspiration. That’s what counts, right? Making something good of something bad.”
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