Catcher, Caught

by Sarah Collins Honenberger

  “You’re shocked,” she says in the same singsong voice like an actress in a television ad, the emphasis on the wrong words. “Don’t you think girls ever think about sex?”

  “Well, yeah, but not like guys. We’re obsessed.”

  “Everyone under twenty-one is obsessed with sex. It’s the one thing you aren’t supposed to do until you’re an adult or married. It’s that verboten thing.”

  “Verboten?”

  “It’s German for ‘forbidden.’”

  “No one speaks German where I’m from.” I’m getting a very different view of Bethany here in the dark.

  “Whatever. I want to have sex before I die.”

  “Is the treatment not working for you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You seem better tonight.”

  “It’s the fourth treatment my dad’s tried. When money is no object, the truth can be obscured for a long time.”

  “Why don’t you tell him you don’t want any more treatments?”

  “Why should he be miserable too? He’ll be miserable enough once I’m gone.” She’s doing these leg swings and her bare legs pump up and down in the air, so I have to look away.

  “Stop doing that with your legs. You’ll make yourself sick. We’re supposed to rest at night.”

  “What’s a matter, Danny, making you perspire a little? Making your heart race?”

  I wish I hadn’t let her in. I turn over on my stomach to hide the evidence. “They say attitude can make all the difference. If you want to live, you can beat it.”

  “Do you believe that? Truly? In your heart of hearts? Because if you do, I have a bridge I’ll sell you in New York.”

  It’s my dad’s line and it reminds me of home and the houseboat and Meredith. I have to figure out a way to get this girl out of my room before something bad happens.

  “I’m really tired, Bethany. Aren’t you?”

  “No. I have to ask you something, a favor.”

  I groan. This is going nowhere fast. I can hear Mack cheering and my heart knocking in my chest. This is ridiculous. I love Meredith. Sleeping with someone else will ruin that.

  She comes over from the cot, straddles my back and massages my shoulder blades. Her fingertips are like razor blades. “Will you sleep with me, Danny? So I don’t die not knowing what it feels like.”

  Yowell and Mack would do it. Hell, Yowell would have invited her over the first night and suggested it himself. Holden, what would Holden do? He’d let her down gently. Make up something about himself so she wouldn’t feel rejected.

  “Listen, I’m not worth it. I’m too young for you, too scrawny, too inexperienced. You deserve better, someone who loves you.”

  “I knew you’d done it. You sound like you know what you’re talking about.” Her fingers are pushing on my shoulder blades with little digs of pressure. “Who is she? You still love her?”

  “Meredith Rilke, a girl at home.”

  “Does she know you’re a dead man?”

  That’s not an easy one to answer. Spoken out loud like that, it’s a little too much truth even for me.

  “You do have cancer, don’t you?”

  “Leukemia, same difference.”

  “This Meredith, she knows and she loves you anyway.”

  “She says she does. Yeah, she does.”

  “Then she’ll understand. She would want you to help me out. Before I die.”

  “You don’t mean that. Maybe you won’t die. Plus it’s not Meredith that’s stopping me. You’re pretty and…I’m interested. But making love is not the same if it’s someone you hardly know. I know, I know I sound like one of those women on Oprah, but it’s true. Sex is easy to do. Animals do it. Male and female, we fit together. Any two of us, but it’s not supposed to be that way with humans. It’s much more. Don’t ruin it for yourself, Bethany. Don’t settle for me like your mom settled for your dad.

  “Everything you want will come to you once you get better, stronger. You’ll fall in love and someone will love you back. You have to believe that.”

  She leaves then because I’m crying like a professional mourner in those old timey movies. She probably thinks, What a loser.

  The next morning Mr. McIntyre and Bethany are not at breakfast. I knock on the women’s dormitory door on my way to treatment. No answer. I ask a passing nurse and she says, “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Please, I’m worried about her. She’s not trying to get better.”

  “The doctor felt she’d had enough. Her parents agreed.”

  At least that is good news. Her parents gave up their war long enough to listen to Bethany.

  When my mother asks about the McIntyres at lunch, Director Jenkins simply shakes his head. “That is not public information. Suffice it to say, she’s on her way home.” When he beams, I feel sick to my stomach, but, for a change, it has nothing to do with the leukemia.

  On Wednesday, my last day of treatment, Mr. Hovenfelt isn’t in the treatment room with me.

  “Where’s Mr. Hovenfelt?” I ask Tomao, my nurse.

  “He’s gone,” says Tomao. “They ship him out yesterday.”

  “He’s cured?” I ask.

  Tomao looks confused and I scramble to think of the Spanish word.

  “He’s dead,” says Tomao. “Died happy. In his sleep.”

  Here is another thing I can’t share with my mother, who waits so patiently in the Mexican sunshine for me to get well.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The D.C. airport looks great to me. So many different faces: white, black, Asian, Slavic. If I survive, I’m never going back to Mexico.

  Out of the clumps of families waiting by the cordoned area outside the international arrivals gate, a girl in a blue coat runs straight at my wheelchair. Meredith. The airline has insisted on the wheelchair because one of the flight attendants overheard Mom talking about my trip to see “Doctor Jenkins.” Before I know it, Meredith’s wrapped herself around me, practically sitting in my lap.

  Joe gives me the thumbs-up across the barrier. Nick’s watching wide-eyed. Dad winks at Mom who may have missed it because she’s staring at Meredith. I can’t not kiss her. When I do, the whole room cheers. It’s pretty embarrassing, but okay in a way. Meredith whispers in my ear, “You’ll never see any of them again. Don’t stop, you idiot.”

  In the car Dad listens to Mom tell the whole thing without interrupting. Nick and Joe thumb wrestle and Meredith fills me in on what’s happening at school.

  “What about Mack?” I ask when we’re on the other side of Fredericksburg.

  When no one answers, I can feel everything in me stiffen. “Guys? Did something happen to Mack?”

  Joe nods to Meredith, a knowing signal that ought to upset me, except she’s clearly committed to me.

  “Mom, Dad. Somebody tell me what happened to Mack.”

  Meredith looks at me. “He’s okay, really. But he had an accident. In his dad’s truck.”

  “What happened?”

  “A stone wall ran into him,” Nick says.

  “God, is he hurt?”

  “A broken arm,” he answers.

  “Is that all?” I ask.

  “The truck doesn’t look so good,” says Joe.

  “What else? You guys are acting like it’s someone’s funeral.”

  “DUI,” Dad says in a soft, terrible voice.

  “Mack knows better than to drink and drive,” I argue.

  “Apparently he doesn’t feel the same way about drugs.” Dad is so angry he doesn’t even try to excuse Mack’s behavior or soften it for me.

  The image of Mack in handcuffs in the back of Brewer’s cruiser is crystal clear.

  When Dad speaks again, his voice is flat. “Mack’s off-limits, Daniel. We can’t have you getting mixed up in that.”

  “Maybe I can help him.”

  “You’ve heard me enough times to know it doesn’t work that way, son. He has to help himself.”

  Meredith inches closer.
Although no one speaks, I spend the remainder of the trip home imagining my life without Mack. It strikes me that, with my concentration on Meredith and the restrictions of the disease, perhaps that’s exactly what he’s been doing in reverse.

  April Fools’ Day we move back onto the houseboat after another huge argument. Mom says it’s too soon. Dad says we need a change. I get the feeling she’s weakening though. Instead of the triumphant parent of an almost cured son, she’s losing hope. I’m vomiting again and back to sleeping half the day. She doesn’t go on and on about the weather, but lets the argument stand at a draw. When Dad starts packing, so does she.

  There are mouse droppings in the galley cupboards and under the rubber mat in the head. While they clean everything with Lysol, I find my first-semester bio book in the cabin and hide out on the top deck with a sleeping bag and a box of Ritz crackers, about the only thing I can keep down lately. Once the sun escapes the thick cumulus cover, I spread out on top of the bag, my legs bare below the boxers. It reminds me of our patio in Mexico and the drying stretched skin on my face while I lay on the lounger and Mom read out loud from Dad’s emails, which the staff printed out for us in the director’s office. As if we had all the time in the world and no place else to be, we baked in that sun, so deliberate in our routine, so sure of its power to heal.

  The bio book actually mentions leukemia. The theory of the lavender cure is not totally off-base. I read and try to match this with the half-Spanish, half-English explanation of the nurse’s aide in Guadalajara. The technical language puts me to sleep though. When I wake up, my stomach doesn’t churn, my head is light, no dull throb behind the eyes. I feel great.

  “Mom,” I call to her from the deck.

  She comes out of their cabin so fast she careens into me on the ladder. As her feet slide out from under her, I grab both arms and she rights herself like a gyroscope, tilting, rising, then straight.

  “What is it?” She’s not smiling. She anticipates bad news. I’ve done this to her.

  “It’s working. I feel clear-headed. Less sore.”

  She smiles, but it’s forced. I know what she’s thinking. It’s early yet. They warned us there might be temporary relief, but that the treatment had to work its way through my system and there would be bad days, too.

  “Can I swim?”

  “Oh, Daniel. It’s April. The water’s so cold.”

  “I haven’t been able to for months. And I feel stronger. I won’t do laps. I’ll quit before I get tired. Please.”

  “Maybe the Rec Center would let you even though we’re not members, since it’s such an unusual situation.”

  “Never mind.”

  “You said you wanted to swim.”

  “Swim like I used to, in the river, not in some chlorinated tank with a roof and no blue sky, and everyone watching me like I’m a freak. They’d probably take pictures and use it for some PR campaign to sell more damn memberships.”

  I leave her there on the deck and haul out the oars and the life jacket and the seat cushions for the dinghy. Once while I’m setting up the little rowboat, I see her face in the back cabin window, but it disappears instantly. The little boat slides along in the upstream current. When I’ve rowed past the defunct marina, I look back and she’s standing on the top deck, a hand over her eyes, staring in my direction. She doesn’t wave. Neither do I.

  Nine Inch Nails rocks out of the Petrianos’ garage. It can’t be Mack’s father. It has to be Mack. I peek under the electronic door—open a foot at the bottom—and Mack’s in his sweats, polishing a little bright blue Nissan pickup truck I’ve never seen before. His hair is scruffy and uneven and he’s bouncing on his feet as he works the rag in big circles.

  “Hey,” I yell over the music. “Whose truck?”

  He straightens and bends his head sideways to see who’s talking to him. “Dan the Man. Come on in.”

  I yank on the garage door handle but it doesn’t budge. I try again. Nothing.

  “It’s stuck.” I yell through the wooden panel.

  “No, it’s not.”

  I kick it and heft it again. It’s stuck. But before I can yell again, the door glides upward and Mack is standing twelve inches from me. With one hand on my shoulder where it throbs, I step inside the fluorescent cube of the garage. He swings his arm down and the garage door closes behind us in one easy motion. I may feel better, but I’m losing ground here in the muscle department. I can’t even open a garage door on plastic slides. Mack doesn’t say a thing, just goes back to massaging the truck with the polishing rag.

  “Nice truck. Is it true you totaled the other one?” I ask.

  “Dad got this one from the dump. It needs a new transmission. But he says if I earn half, he’ll pay the other half.”

  “Not so good for double dates.” I fix the smile on my face.

  “You can borrow it. It’s Meredith’s favorite color.”

  It takes all my control not to ask him how he knows that.

  We sit in the cab and he fills me in on school stuff. Beverly got knocked up by one of the migrant workers’ sons. The motorcycle boyfriend is long gone. The word is the father of the baby is earning money to pay for an abortion, but Beverly’s not sure yet. Leonard’s in love with a girl from Heathsville who drives a silver BMW. Christie is ancient history. The quarterback for the football team was busted for cocaine possession.

  “Who tells you all this junk?”

  “You know, you just hear stuff.”

  “We were never in the right place before to hear that kind of stuff. You must have new friends.”

  “Maybe.” He jumps out.

  The open hood blocks my view. I get out too and circle around to the front fender. His eyes are closed. One hand is tapping his thigh to the beat of the music when all of a sudden he spins and does this incredible drum riff on the workbench. His head’s lowered, his hair shakes, and his shoulders rock to the same rhythm.

  “Whoa, where did you learn to drum?”

  “Cal.”

  “Cal Miles from seventh-grade band?”

  Mack nods but keeps on drumming.

  “Cal’s a pothead, Mack.”

  “He’s an awesome drummer.” He shrugs and moves to the other side of the open-faced engine.

  “You’re high now.”

  “What do you care?”

  When I start to edge around the front bumper to be able to see into his eyes, he slips into the cab and shuts the door.

  “What the hell are you doing, Mack? This is crazy.”

  “It helps me see things more clearly. I’ve got a lot to deal with right now.”

  “Yeah, well, so do a lot of kids, including yours truly, but they don’t all go for broke with cocaine.”

  “Cal had some leftover. I had a little extra money.” The words are muffled by the glass. “Like I said, I’m working for the truck.”

  “He’s dealing now and you’re his ho?”

  Mack punches at me, but stops just short of the window. He motions for me to go away.

  “Jeez, Mack. You are such a lightweight. Juliann will never go for it. And Cal and his friends are limited brain-wise, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. You haven’t been around much.”

  “What’s the matter with you? You’re smarter than this.”

  But he’s out the other side. He flings up the garage door and stands there with his fucking arm extended like one of those miniature iron jockeys, his eyes half closed. The chickenshit.

  No one’s home at the twins’ house. I leave a note on a scrap paper from my pocket for Meredith to call. Halfway home I have to sit down to catch my breath. It’s a mile from the creek to Mack’s and back, and I’ve come the long way around by Meredith’s for nothing. St. John’s graveyard wall is warm in the sun. When Yowell drives by in a shiny new convertible with a girl I don’t know in the passenger seat, I’m still cursing Mack and wondering if Joe has any good ideas on how to convince Mack to stop using. Y
owell waves, but he doesn’t stop.

  By my sneakers there are four little spikes of green poking out of the mud. Daffodils. I wonder if Bethany has noticed it’s spring where she is. Or Mr. Hovenfelt.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The idea is brilliant. So brilliant I can’t even sleep. My legs twitch and my back throbs and my eyes are gritty, but I pace on the deck in the dark starless night. This solves everything. No tubes and machines, no officious doctors barking “Stand back” or nurses snipping “Family only.” No histrionics from Mom, no piercing looks from Dad as if he’s afraid he’ll forget what I look like, no Nick scrunched into a lump on a hospital chair when he’s never been still in his life before, no last-minute brush of Joe’s hand on my arm, or Meredith’s mute tears. It’ll be Holden and me at the last in New York City, searching for whatever, hanging on to life like the first time you ride a Ferris wheel and realize how big the world really is.

  After I pack a few things in Dad’s small rolling suitcase, I lock the cabin door from the inside and get out an old notebook from the desk drawer. Everyone knows that when you die you’re supposed to have a will. Not that I researched this stuff, but it can’t make any difference what kind of paper I use if I make it sound official enough. The point is to tie up all the loose ends. You want people to know you were prepared. That has to be comforting.

  In movies they always read the will with the whole family in the room. I like that idea. A lot. Even if the will turns out not to be legal, what do I care? I won’t be around anyway, but Nick and Joe, my parents, and Meredith and Mack, they’ll know I was thinking about them.

  To be honest just the idea of Meredith in some stuffy lawyer’s office listening to some poufy-ass lawyer like Henry Walker read my last words makes me want to puke. I almost don’t write the thing. But Holden keeps harping in my head, You can’t leave without saying something, to explain it. They’ll blame themselves and you don’t want that.