In as much as anyone can think about their parents and sex, Leigh knew Lillian was having it, but Pete seemed to really like his mother for reasons above and beyond that. Pete listened to what she said, asked about her work, and talked with her for an hour at dinner about the history of plumbing (Lillian knew a lot about plumbing, because in historical romance novels, taking a bath was often a huge plot point). Leigh decided that Pete had asked his mother out because he liked her and that sex was mixed up in it, but not in an obvious, all-there-is way.
Leigh knew he liked Astra, but he also knew that sleeping with her was the thing he liked best. He didn't think this was wrong, exactly, but neither was it right. It wasn't that she didn't like it—Leigh had seen parts of her body shiver and felt others swell and heat. But he knew that sex was not what Astra liked best about him. It would almost be worth skipping all the years between now and Pete's age of fifty-two in order to finally be a man who could see a girl without seeing only an opportunity.
It was odd to be around a man and want to be like that man. It made him feel sad and disloyal that he never had wanted to be like Clayton. Leigh hoped that by accepting Millie's request to live in Calvert Park, he would find a way to want to be like his father.
But for now he could aspire to be like Pete, who, watching him ice his foot one night, said, "You know, I used to run marathons, and you shouldn't have to be doing that. How much does it hurt?"
Up until that moment, Leigh's thoughts about the pain had been mostly of the Not again variety. Now, forced to quantify it, he said, "A lot, actually. Kind of a lot."
"Can I see?" Pete asked, before lifting the ice pack and moving Leigh's foot back and forth and side to side. "You should get an X-ray. Might be a stress fracture."
"Great," Leigh said. "How long will I have to stop running, do you think?"
"I don't know. A month, at least. Maybe two."
"I don't even like running," Leigh said. "It's for soccer."
"Well, now you'll have to stop," Pete said, with a slight smile. "And probably find out that you liked it more than you thought."
No doubt, there was a lesson somewhere in that comment, but for now Leigh was content to imagine his foot restored to him, pain-free and whole.
chapter seven
in the distance
A set of X-rays confirmed it. Leigh had a stress fracture in the third metatarsal bone and needed to ease off running for six to eight weeks.
"You probably trained too hard, too fast," the orthopedist said when Leigh explained that he'd been running because his soccer coach felt that he needed to work on his endurance. "No reason for you to quit working on your performance, though. Try the pool."
Which was how he came to spend the month or so he had left in the city swimming every morning at an overpriced health club where Pete had given him a temporary membership as a present.
Leigh's previous plan for the summer had been to return as a junior aide to the city's summer program for special needs kids. He'd done it the previous summer and had been so horrible as a reading tutor that the director moved him to the boys' athletic program. Kids, ages six to nine, who had ADD, ADHD, or mild autism (called Asperger's, which sounded, to Leigh, like a pain reliever) loved to run but had no idea how to actually follow the rules of a game. Leigh had been assigned to act as a field shadow, helping to keep the boys focused on playing.
He had been really good at it, but he knew that running after a bunch of hyperactive kids all day would be impossible with a stress fracture. He had to do something, not only because he would lose his mind sitting around but because colleges liked to see summers spent in worthwhile pursuits. He had been an intern two summers before at a gallery on Twenty-second Street, owned by a friend of Lillian's. It had been fun and, in its way, interesting, although Leigh had mostly filed invoices, letters, and drafts of brochure copy.
On such short notice it was almost impossible to get a new internship, and so Leigh found himself working for his mother's editor in the romance division of the publishing house. Every other intern was a girl. He mostly liked being around them as they talked, complained, ordered coffee, and did their jobs. It was just Xeroxing, filing, and writing up readers' reports on the huge number of manuscripts that came in every day. Leigh couldn't believe how many people wanted to write romance novels. He also couldn't believe how the girls could take these things so seriously.
The interns (and the editors!) talked endlessly about whether it worked when the hero initially didn't like the heroine, not realizing that he really loved her. They analyzed the merits of the strong, feisty, "modern" heroine versus the ones who were more old fashioned. And, as a group and among themselves, they all argued about whether or not the heroes were the right kind of men.
Leigh wanted to tell them that a hero in a romance novel was no kind of man—no one could be that absurdly perfect. But the girls he worked with seemed to know this already and argued about it as a way of discussing boys in general in much the same way he and his friends talked about movie stars as a way of judging girls in general. Because he had spent years listening to his mother talk about her work he found things to say in readers' reports that did not dwell on how fascinated he was by the ideals the characters had to conform to or on how much the stories in the manuscripts bored him.
~~~
The war did not have summer vacation, but Leigh found he had become used to it. He still tried to keep track of who had died, but what was happening there had become difficult to follow, with no one willing to say anything clearly. The reasons for the war shifted slightly, with the emphasis now more on freedom and less on illegal weapons. Leigh no longer asked his mother anything about Iraq. The whole thing made her livid, and he didn't believe—wouldn't or couldn't, he wasn't sure which—that it was all bad any more than it was all good.
~~~
On the night before Astra left for her college tour, Leigh took her out to dinner at a place that served omelets. She loved them and always told him he should think seriously about eating more eggs.
"They're a perfect protein," she said happily, spearing into a three cheese and chive dish.
"I'll miss you," he said, meaning it.
"I was thinking that you should come and see me," she said.
"Yes, definitely, sure," he said. "I mean, I'm sure to visit my mom, so of course I'll see you."
"No, listen," Astra told him. "My parents are going to be in California for Thanksgiving. Mom has cousins there."
"Nice," he said, because, after all, California was nice.
"I'll be alone, filling out applications," Astra said. "Mom wants me done by the time they get back."
Leigh, who could type even faster than his mother, had typed more than a few of Astra's papers. Did Astra want him to come up in November and type her applications?
"Leigh, we could be together," she said, leaning across the table. "For the whole time. You know, no sneaking around, no being in a hurry."
Of all the humiliating things sex in high school involved, finding the time and privacy was right up there with having no experience in what you so desperately wanted to master. So far, sex with Astra had been what they hid and hurried and worried over. For them, sex had never been what unfolded at its own pace.
"I'll be here in November," he said, not sure he deserved the good fortune of being Astra Grein's boyfriend.
But she had picked him, so who was he to point out the error of her ways? When they kissed goodbye outside her building, he felt it more like a greeting.
~~~
Lillian and Pete drove Leigh down to Calvert Park. Leigh had been surprised at how many things he owned and how strongly he felt the need to bring almost all of them along. It was a Tuesday, so of course Clayton was not home, which spared Leigh from having to introduce him, once again, to Pete.
Millie hugged Lillian, who had a package of romance novels for her, and shook hands with Pete. Janet gave everyone iced tea, and walked with Lillian around the backyard, to w
here Bubbles had been banished until she could calm down at the sight of Leigh's many boxes going into the house. When the last box was set down and Millie had run downstairs to answer the door, Pete looked around and said, "This'll be good. You'll have more space here than at home."
Not only had shelves been built, but also a long, wide desk on which Janet had put a tape dispenser, a stapler, a new box of pens, and a dictionary.
"I guess I won't be doing my homework in the kitchen," Leigh said, pulling a pen from the box.
It was black, with an extra-fine tip. His favorite.
"You and Lillian are a little cramped there," Pete said.
Aware that Clayton's house was much bigger than his mother's apartment, Leigh shrugged, not wanting Pete to think of Lillian as less well off.
"I'd like to ask your mother to move in with me," Pete said. "I don't know if she'll say yes."
Leigh stayed as still as possible, his eyes fixed on the pen in his hand, hoping Pete wasn't asking for his opinion on what Lillian might say. Or want.
"She'll talk to you before she decides," Pete said, "but I hope you already know that no matter what happens, you'll have a home where I live."
This seemed, on the face of it, an absurd thing to say. And yet, as if in the distance, Leigh could hear a real kindness, as well as a generosity that struck him as rare and important.
"Thank you," he said, feeling ridiculous and uneasy. "That's very kind."
He was saved from the need to say anything more by Millie's bursting in with a boy Leigh did not know.
The boy was not quite Millie's height, and wore glasses. He had on a pair of shorts and a button-down shirt several sizes too big for him. The shorts, in fact, looked too big as well, giving the impression that he had shrunk after dressing himself.
"This is Franklin," Millie said. "He lives down the street."
"Franklin Staines," the boy said, shaking hands with Pete and Leigh. "How do you do?"
"Maia's here," Millie said. "She made a cake and Franklin's brother drove her over."
"With me," Franklin said, stating the obvious.
"Maia thought the frosting might melt if she walked it over, as it's so hot," Millie said.
It was hot; even with the low, steady hum of central air, you could feel the wet heat pressing in from the outside. And it explained why it had seemed to take so long to carry boxes up the stairs.
"The cake's partly for you, as a welcome," Millie said, "and partly for my birthday."
"Your birthday's not for another couple of weeks," Leigh said, panicked, in case he'd missed it and sunk to an all-new low by becoming Brother Who Forgets Sister's Birthday.
"That's why it's only partly for me," she said. "Come on, let's go downstairs."
In the kitchen, Maia and Franklin's brother were talking to Janet and Lillian. Leigh watched with interest as Maia shook Pete's hand. He almost missed the other boy's name (Kevin) because he was wondering about her sudden ability to touch a stranger.
Kevin was also going to be a senior and, like Leigh, had once played soccer but now swam.
"Allergies did me in," Kevin said. "No pollen's been invented that doesn't make me wheeze, but chlorine is no problem."
"Kevin and Maia get shots from the same doctor," Millie said.
"I get them too," Franklin said.
"You have seasonal allergies?" Lillian asked Maia, who was cutting up the cake and putting it on plates.
"Dust mites and cats," Maia said. "My mom has a cat that's almost as old as I am, so I get the shots."
"I have asthma," Franklin said.
"I did too," Pete said, taking some cake. "But I outgrew it."
Leigh, handing a plate to Franklin, saw the boy's eyes, behind his glasses, get very big, and his mouth open a little, as if Pete had just revealed one of the world's most protected secrets. It was clear no one had ever told Franklin that his asthma might one day end, as if by magic.
It was crowded in the kitchen, so Janet shunted people out toward the dining room. She sent Kevin and Millie into the sun porch for more chairs and got everyone iced tea, putting ice cubes and mint leaves into each glass. Leigh found himself between Maia and Kevin. His mother, across the table from him and next to Pete, smiled, but her eyes looked tired. She scraped the icing off of her cake and put it on Pete's plate. Lillian had always disliked the way icing felt in her mouth, and this old habit of hers made Leigh look from his mother's plate to his own. On his right sat Kevin's empty plate, and on his left Maia's full one.
"Not hungry?" he whispered to her as around them Millie, Franklin, Janet, Kevin, and Pete talked about allergy shots and swimming events.
"It's hard in crowds," she said. "It makes me nervous."
Leigh thought that he could understand that. If eating was hard for her, then she'd need to concentrate. The way he did when reading about the war. And it was hard to concentrate when other people were around.
"Pretend it's just me," he said. "And pretend I'm Millie and it's only us sitting here."
Maia smiled at him, and all of her odd features, the ones that had struck him as pretty but not attractive, took on a glow. Her brown eyes, lit by her smile, had an almost golden hue, and he felt as if he had transformed her into someone worth looking at.
"It's really good cake," he said. "And I'm not just saying that because you made it."
She took a bite, and then another. He could see, watching her throat, how much effort was involved in swallowing. He thought it might help her to think of something else while eating, the way some people fell asleep by counting sheep.
There was nothing about his job at the publishing house that was interesting enough to repeat. So instead, Leigh pointed to the glare coming through the dining room window and told her about how at the art gallery two summers before, he'd heard his boss talk about light having three purposes: as a symbol of the divine, as a response to the natural world, and as a vehicle for color. He had loved listening to this guy hold forth about art, and Leigh could see Maia calming down as he talked, and so he didn't stop, not for so much as a pause, until her cake was finished.
chapter eight
fierce hopes
Before Millie's birthday arrived, Leigh had painted his room and made an appointment to take his driver's test. By badgering both Janet and Clayton, he'd finished up his remaining hours in the evenings, when he was too tired to paint. Janet let him drive her over to Frederick on Saturday, which took care of his lingering hesitation at freeway exits.
Kevin, whose job at a lumberyard kept him from joining Millie and Franklin in their efforts to help Leigh paint, had taken his driving test two months before. He told Leigh that it was nerve-racking, but easy.
"A left turn, a broken U-turn, parking, and not killing anyone—that's kind of it," he said.
"Except for buying a car," Leigh said.
He had money saved in the bank (half of which had been a gift from Clayton and Lillian when Leigh turned sixteen) and was hoping he could get a used car with less than eighty thousand miles on it.
"That's the easy part," Kevin said. "I have enough for a car, but not the insurance."
"Your father won't pay for it?" Leigh asked.
The question just slipped out, sounding spoiled and rude only after it was spoken. Clayton had offered, as soon as driving lessons began, to cover Leigh's insurance. It had been done with such ease (none of Clayton's usual hesitations or stilted phrases) that Leigh had simply assumed that's how it was done. You paid for the car and your father picked up the insurance.
"I think he would if he could," Kevin said. "But my mom quit working when Franklin started having trouble at school."
Franklin, who had gotten a ladder, a small brush, and a roll of paper tape and done a perfect job on the crown molding in Leigh's room, seemed the least likely of candidates to be a kid having trouble at school.
"She'll probably go back," Kevin said. "But not until they think things have calmed down."
"Franklin's pretty cal
m," Leigh said.
"It's not him; it's how he's treated," Kevin said. "He's skipped like two grades, you know—I mean, he's younger than Millie and he's always getting himself in the center of trouble."
Leigh waited since Kevin had stopped looking at him, as if the distance held the words needed to explain his brother.
"Older kids pick on him," Kevin said. "Seniors, mostly, but, you know, he's little, and he just ... he's a target."
"Well, we'll be seniors," Leigh said. "So, we can protect him."
"Yeah," Kevin said. "Sure."
~~~
The school where Franklin was picked on and where Leigh, come September, would go was five miles from Clayton's house. Leigh took one of his first testing-the-foot runs over to it. The place was huge, more like the campus of a small college than a high school. Leigh's school in New York was crammed into three shabby townhouses, with the pool and gym buried deep in the basement. At Calvert Park Preparatory School, however, there was an entire building for athletics. An arts building with a theater, as well as studios (which Leigh knew about from both Millie and from the school's Web page). There was an outdoor track and a lacrosse field with bleachers all around it. Manicured lawns sprawled between all the buildings and on either side of the brick pathways, where, he guessed, students walked from class to class.
Tuition here was not cheap, but it was one of the reasons that people lived in Calvert Park. The suburb was on the east side of D.C. and not nearly as nice as its famous cousin, Bethesda, on the west side. But houses were cheaper here, and the school, while expensive, was supposed to be the best in the county. Leigh, walking around his new school, realized that he had never thought before about how much of his life was shaped by his tuition and his parents' belief that paying that tuition was the best thing they could do for him.
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