For me—outside of Mack having his feelings hurt—the thing about Yowell’s party is to make sure Meredith’s not too impressed with any of that glitter. It wouldn’t be in character, but stranger things have happened. I certainly can’t claim to understand girls.
What saves me is that Joe comes home the weekend before the party. Perfect timing as usual. When he shows up unannounced, Mom starts right in sobbing. If I didn’t know her better, I’d think she’s been medicating herself when he’s not there. After hugs all around, Nick asks if we can have pizza. It’s a never-ending thing with Nick. He must have a cheese deficiency or something. Joe volunteers to go pick it up. How useful would that be, to have your license so you could go just hop in the car and pick up pizza whenever you wanted?
“Come on, old man,” Joe says to me.
Nick yells, “Family road trip.”
From the way everyone laughs, I can tell that’s going to be a joke from now until forever. Dad tells him no, he needs to stay and set the table. Which ticks him off. He kicks a chair and disappears before they can punish him. Houseboat cabins are good for that kind of escape. Duck into an opening and you could be anywhere. No long echoing hallways where angry screams chase after you as you leave.
Before pulling off in the Subaru Joe changes all the settings, the mirrors, the seat, the radio station. Reggae explodes from the dashboard.
“Whoa.” I twist the dial back. “A little on the loud side.”
“Man, are you in a pissy mood too? I won’t come home if everyone’s going to be creepy.”
I don’t want to argue. I’m glad to see him—really relieved, honestly—because I have a zillion questions for him about Meredith. But it’s tough when someone just sails into your life when it’s convenient for them.
“I’m not in a bad mood. It’s too fucking loud, that’s all.”
“Fucking too bad,” he says and twists the dial back.
I won’t deign to answer that. If he’s turned into a jerk, I don’t care. He’s the one who has to live with a jerk, not me.
At the pizza place, our order isn’t ready, so we sit at an empty table. Face-to-face, like a stare-down contest, except neither one of us looks at the other. We wait. And wait. Joe’s usually like Dad, patient. But his knee’s jiggling and he’s squirming around, a sure sign that something’s up with him.
He apologizes first. “Look, I’m sorry for losing my cool. Music’s music. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. You probably feel awful and I’m attacking you.” He frowns like he’s thinking really hard and tilts his head at me. “How do you feel?”
“Tired all the time. Sick to my stomach a lot. But right this minute, I’m just glad to be here.”
“You are all right, kiddo. All fucking right.” He lays the two twenty-dollar bills Dad gave him on the table and smoothes them out. “So what’s happening at Essex County High? Who’s pregnant this semester?”
“I’m not there.”
“Jeez, I forgot. You’re probably acing the tests without the lectures and the teachers to confuse you.”
I smile because he’s so right.
“How did the Catcher in the Rye unit go?”
“I aced it.”
He punches my arm. I wince and pull back, cradling the arm.
“God, Daniel.” He stands up and rushes over to my side of the table. “I am such a jerk.”
I’m laughing like a hyena. When he realizes it’s a setup, he snarls and spins on his heel like I have cooties.
“Landon,” the girl at the register yells across the room. “Landon, your order’s up.”
Joe starts laughing with me. “Same old Daniel. You turd.”
On the way home he flicks the radio off altogether. “Tell me about this bridge queen from Ohio. You kiss her yet?”
I nod and grin. “She’s from Charlottesville, actually.”
“Way to go. Anything else you want to tell me?”
“Actually…I’m gonna see her next Saturday at Leonard’s Halloween bash.”
“Senator Yowell’s letting loose some of his cash for a non-Republican function?”
“Yeah, wild, huh? And Mom’s letting me go. But that’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about. What if Meredith’s impressed with the Yowells? The big house, the pool, you know.”
“If she’s that shallow, let her go, man.”
“I didn’t say she was. I’m just trying to be ready, that’s all.”
“Whatever. It’s like this. If her eyes are blue and you like brown eyes but otherwise she’s the perfect woman for you, do you reject her?” He stops at the red light and turns onto the side street like he’s not sure this is the right way to go. “No way. No girl is ever going to be perfect, but some things are more important than others. Only you get to say which.”
The Subaru crawls along. Joe’s leaning sideways to see something in the side mirror.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
He doesn’t answer, just puts his tongue over his upper lip, concentrating like he does when he’s trying to figure how not to lose his queen in chess.
“Joe? What the hell is it?”
“I think there are two young ladies behind us you might know.”
I whip around and look out the rear window. Sure enough, it’s the twins in their sweats, jogging. Meredith is waving madly.
“Stop.”
He guns it.
“Joe, for God’s sake, quit fooling around and stop the effing car.”
He brakes hard, then puts it in reverse right there on Water Lane and starts to back up. Man, my brother is…a real cowboy.
“Enough. You’ll hit something.”
The rear wheel squeals on the curb and he cuts the motor. “You coming?” He leaves the driver’s door wide open.
And he’s right. The chances of another car coming down this last stretch of Water Lane before Jeanette Drive are a zillion to one. Everyone turns at the post office road.
After the introductions, Joe lets me do the talking. He’s angled his foot on the fire hydrant and he’s looking out across Hoskins Creek like he’s just biding time, humoring me. You can see Juliann is fascinated. Speechless, in fact. That Jane Austen look is in her eye again. Girls are so weird.
Meredith’s T-shirt is pale green like apple tree leaves in the spring. Next to that shirt, her tan looks like you could eat it. When a girl looks that good, it’s hard to concentrate.
She smells great, too. “Daniel, you still planning to go to Leonard’s on Saturday for the Halloween party?”
With the girls turned toward me, Joe’s out of their line of vision. He pushes his lips together in a know-it-all smirk and nods. If I react and the girls turn around, they’ll know he’s cutting up, so I have to keep a straight face. I look into Meredith’s eyes.
“Yeah, sure. Did Mack talk to you about getting there?”
“Mom said she’d drive us, but now she’s supposed to meet friends of hers, from work, and they want to eat at some restaurant out past Warsaw. Good Eats?”
Joe is bobbing his head up and down like an old lady at a tea party. My lip’s going to start bleeding if I have to keep this up.
The driving thing I can solve. “It’s not that far to Leonard’s. Just beyond the Catholic Church, right off 17. Maybe Mack could drive us all.”
Joe is smiling and tipping his head from side to side, Mr. Happy from the kids’ book. It’s almost impossible not to laugh.
“Okay,” Juliann says, like that would be acceptable, but without her usual enthusiasm when Mack’s name comes up.
“I’ll check with him again and call you,” I say to Meredith. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
When Joe starts walking back to the car, I wonder if I should say something more, about school. Or Halloween. Or that I’ll call her sometime just to talk. It’s not as easy to talk to her face-to-face as it is on the telephone. Why is that?
Juliann raises her arms to the sky and starts jogging in place. Meredith’s shaki
ng her head in that can you believe this way.
Juliann looks daggers at her, then turns to me. “Is your brother at the University?”
When I look from Meredith to Juliann, she blushes. It’s all over her face that she’s just fallen for Joe big-time. Man, oh man, I’m in trouble now. Mack’ll have my head. There’s no good way to tell a sixteen-year-old girl that a twenty-one-year-old college guy is too old for her. She ought to have enough sense to know. Meredith sees it too, I can tell.
“I’ll have Mack call Juliann directly, don’t you think?” I whisper to Meredith.
She nods. “That’d be good. Yeah, do that.”
And louder, to both girls. “I’ll talk to y’all tomorrow. Or later tonight…”
When Joe honks, I sprint for the car because it’s already rolling.
“Man.” Joe starts to punch my arm, but draws back at the last minute. “Those are two cute chicks. You and Mack did good.”
I can’t exactly tell him the whole truth. Because I sure haven’t done anything special to impress them. I fell off a bridge. How random is that? Twin girls just happen to move next door to my best friend who just happens to introduce me and we just happen to take them fishing and they just happen to end up liking us. Until Joe College comes home. All I can think is I’m lucky Joe lives somewhere else most of the time.
“So,” Joe starts, “what did you want to ask me about? Need condoms?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mom and Dad are all jokey and funny at dinner. Joe tells one story after the next about the kids in his dorm, his professors. One old guy who shuffles in and stands in front of the board, greets the class, opens his notes, and asks a few questions. No one answers. The students look around, confused. The professor repeats the question. He scans the rows. No one speaks. He excuses himself. When he comes back in, he has a different notebook. “Wrong class,” he says.
Dad repeats the punch line about six times and we’re all laughing, way too hard for the joke, but I can just see the fuddy-duddy professor wondering what’s going on when no one knows the answer. They haven’t even read the book.
Nick volunteers for cleanup duty. Amazing. Joe lugs his back pack into the main cabin, turns on all the lights, and settles himself at one end of the couch with a book propped on a pillow in his lap.
“Can I use the cell phone to call Mack?” I ask Dad.
When I come back inside, the whole deal with the Halloween party and the twins is figured out. Mom is pacing back and forth and Joe has closed his book.
His forehead wrinkles exactly like Dad’s, which I never noticed before. He’s intent on the conversation and doesn’t acknowledge me. He drills his words at Mom. “I don’t understand why the lawyer can’t stop them.”
Mom’s answer is like raining bullets. “Apparently it’s a special law. To protect children. As parents, we have no rights. They’ve already found us guilty. Neglect and abuse. It’s been in all the papers. They filed this special petition that says Daniel is a child in need of services, CHINS. They asked the court to order the treatment over our objection.”
Joe looks at me with a question on his face.
“Don’t ask me. They won’t even let me go to the hearings.”
“But do you want the treatment, the chemo, radiation, whatever?” Joe asks.
There’s kind of a swollen silence like the sound right before a balloon pops when you know you’ve hit something sharp or hot and it’s likely to explode any second.
Mom claps her hands and puts them to her lips as if she’s shocked that the question would even be asked. “Of course he doesn’t want the chemo. Misty’s been treating him with herbs and vitamins and he hasn’t been sick to his stomach in days. He’s getting better. His color’s better too.”
To tell you the truth, I can’t think what part of me has any color at all, much less what’s changed. I sleep two hours out of every six. My knees and elbows ache like I’m one hundred years old. My face doesn’t have a pimple all of a sudden as if even the oil and dirt have fled for fear of the skulking cancer cells. If you ask me…but even as Joe is saying the words that no one else has said, it hits me that from the very beginning of this entire mess no one has asked me what I want. And with the court and the county and my parents at war, they’re all too busy building their own moat and fortifications.
Nick’s on his bunk when I go in to grab a sweatshirt.
“Has Joe finished his homework?” he asks.
I shrug.
“He said we could play Risk.”
My sweatshirt gets hung up on one arm, inside out, and I’m stuck but trying to get it untangled without having to take off the stupid thing and start over.
I mumble, half in, half out of the sweatshirt. “Could is the operative word. He said we could play.”
“Don’t you want to play?”
“Grow up.”
“Why don’t you want to play? Joe does.”
“You and your games. Jeez, Nick, you’re so into beating other people. What is it with you and winning?”
“You’re the one who won at Scrabble last time. You used to like to play games. Before you…before.”
“Yeah, before I found out I might not be here this time next year. Death. It’s just a teeny little thing that changes your perspective.”
Nick throws his Game Boy at me. Lucky for him, I catch it.
“Don’t be throwing this away, boyo. You can play it when no one else wants to play Risk with you. When I’m dead and gone.”
I toss the little machine back to him, but he’s already halfway out of the bunk, his head tucked, aiming for my legs. Everything turns into slow motion. There’s silence from all sides and then there’s Nick. So compact, all muscle, he hits me like an anchor, twists around my legs, drags me down. With one arm still inside my sweatshirt, I’m pinned and helpless. Joe appears at the door. In a split second he takes it all in and digs through the tangle to grip Nick around the waist. He plants his leg by my chest so I can’t reach Nick.
“Picking on someone weaker than you, eh?”
Who knows which one of us he means? Who cares? It’s an old-fashioned pig pile, like we used to do all the time before Joe left for college. Nick squeals, I grunt, Joe pulls. I push, Nick squeals. The bunk bed probably gets the worst of it. And when we’re all exhausted, no one’s able to stand because we’re laughing so hard, like clown chimpanzees at the circus.
Although Dad and Mom have to be able to hear us from the living room, they leave us alone. And that’s the thing that reminds me most of old times. For a change no one’s worrying about poor sick Daniel.
“So, what did Mack say?” Joe asks at breakfast as he’s stuffing Dad’s famous veggie omelet down his throat like he’s a refugee from the Sudan who hasn’t eaten in a month.
“Juice?” Mom asks no one in particular.
“Me,” Dad, Joe, and Nick say at the same time.
Mom pours four glasses and gives the first one to me.
“I didn’t want any,” I say.
“You’re the one who really needs it.”
Joe looks at me like he suddenly understands what I’m up against. “Mack?” he repeats.
“He’s gonna get the twins and then swing by the public boat ramp for me. Nick can run me up there in the Whaler.”
“Maybe I can’t,” Nick says.
“Why can’t you?” Mom’s refereeing again. So much for the anonymity of the pig pile.
“Never mind.” I’m not about to wait for the blessing of a thirteen-year-old worm. “I’ll take the rowboat.”
“I don’t think that’s a great—” Mom starts.
Dad cuts her off. “When is all this social activity taking place?”
When Mom’s back is turned, Joe takes a swig of my juice. He swallows in one gulp and grins. “Saturday night, the Yowells’ Halloween party. Daniel has a date with a gorgeous girl.”
Dad grins like he’s actually really pleased for me. I’m so busy feeling halfway normal at the wh
ole scene that I miss Mom’s frown until she sits down.
“Won’t there be a lot of kids there?” she asks.
“I hope. It wouldn’t be much fun with just Leonard, Mack, and Meredith.”
“Daniel.” Dad’s irritated now. All that good feeling gone in an instant and I’m back to the whole fishbowl feeling.
“I think I’ll row for a bit.” I put my plate with the half-eaten omelet in the sink. If we had a dog, it wouldn’t be so wasteful. I can just hear Mom, though, on the subject of a dog, a germ factory. “When are you going back to school, Joe?”
“Pretty soon. I’ve got a term paper due on Tuesday. Gotta start researching it.”
When Mom and Dad go ape about being prepared and staying focused, I slip out. Joe’s okay.
The creek is like a big blank brown paper bag, not a mark, not a wrinkle, not even an otter sunbathing on the mud flats by the reeds. If it were July, it’d be too hot to even be out in the rowboat like this, but October’s perfect. The top of my head is baking, but the air is cool on my neck and on my arms where I’ve pushed up the sweatshirt sleeves. I’m not in a hurry, not headed anywhere, no schedule. The boat is ancient, a metal body with a few telltale dents, wooden seats that Dad replaced when he found it washed up in the reeds. With forty different paint colors chipped off in different places, the hull looks like modern art.
When I’m alone like this, away from my family, it’s so much easier to think. I don’t know how Holden stood it so long at Pencey or the other boarding schools he was farmed out to by his parents. With kids like Ackley and Stradlater coming in and out of his room all the time, using his stuff and interrupting him, even when he’s in the john. Privacy’s pretty important to me. If the only way out was to not write the assigned papers and to not pass the tests, I might have done the same thing.
I don’t want you to think I’m a nutcase or anything, but out on the river by myself is where I have my best conversations with Holden. He knows how it feels to be on the outside of everything. After he read Isak Dinesen on exploring Africa, he wanted to call the author up and talk. I understand that completely. I wish I could call Holden right now.
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