Up until this year, Clayton and Lillian had split the cost of Leigh's school. It was why Lillian wrote three romance novels a year for two different publishers. It was part of why Clayton worked so hard. Their willingness to do this, as well as their fierce hopes for his future, were part of the same fathomless good fortune that would keep him out of the war. It made him, as he stood next to a building full of science labs and computer terminals, aware and guilty of his shortcomings.
He had entirely too many vague thoughts and uncertain conclusions for the path his parents were trying to help him build. They had a clear end in mind, and until recently, Leigh had thought he had it too. But as his last year in high school began to look like the first major steppingstone to that end, he realized he didn't have a clue.
Anyone who had had this much money and effort sunk into him ought to be turning out a little more definite. He hadn't nearly enough of the accomplished, polished sheen he felt he should. It had occurred to him that he should take a year off before going to college, but he didn't know if that was what he wanted. Leigh could barely tell himself what he thought, let alone convey it to anyone else.
Although, right at that particular moment, two things were very clear: he was worried (actually, more like scared) about going to this new school, and his foot hurt. He walked the five miles back, relieved that while running might be out, he could still get himself home.
~~~
Millie, who had spent her previous birthdays with her father in a rented cabin on the Eastern Shore, had not wanted a party this year. In spite of it being, as she pointed out, her "first year as an official teenager."
Franklin came over at lunch and gave her three squirrels of varying sizes, made of glass.
"If you put them near your window, the light will make them look like squirrel sunshine," he said.
He could only stay for a little bit, as he had to go home and get ready for his piano lesson. Millie said he had skipped his practice all last week so that he could help paint Leigh's room.
"I think he likes you pretty much," Millie said. "He mostly never skips practice."
That Franklin liked Millie was so obvious, Leigh didn't think he should need to point it out. He also thought it should remain none of his business. If Franklin wanted to tell Millie he liked her, then he would, and without any unsolicited help from Leigh. Millie was too young for boys anyway, he told himself, neatly ignoring that the first girl he'd ever kissed had been in seventh grade and not yet thirteen.
As a present, he had taken Millie out the previous night to a restaurant in D.C. that his mother had told him about. It was near Dupont Circle; Millie was thrilled to put on a dress and endure the Metro's endless escalators. Leigh never got tired of noticing how clean the subways were compared to New York's. He had yet to see a rat on any of the tracks here.
Millie did what she always did in restaurants and ordered three appetizers, one dessert, and a virgin piña colada. Leigh, not the most adventuresome eater in the world, had steak and a Coke. Then they went to a movie about some pirates, which was pretty great and ridiculous in the way only movies could be. The actress in it reminded him of Maia, which made him uncomfortable, as he did not want to be thinking of Maia Morland as anything but a train wreck.
Leigh forgot about it, though, when Millie told him that her night out with him was the best way to transition into thirteen. Best birthday ever. This seemed unlikely, given that her father had been dead for only four months, but Leigh was trying to respect all the ways that Millie was choosing to cope, and if one of them was telling herself that she was having a great birthday, then he wasn't going to contradict her.
~~~
But it gave him something to ask Astra about when he called her. She didn't like to e-mail, saying that a communication originally devised as a way for scientists to exchange data was not appropriate for romance. Astra was full of theories like this, and for the most part, Leigh didn't mind. He never touched her without remembering that they were only sleeping together because of her theories on love, sex, trust, and college.
Last fall, she had told him she didn't want to go to college a virgin. And she didn't want to have sex with someone she didn't know well. She didn't want to be afraid. She didn't want to sleep with someone who might be mean to her, and she knew, she had said, that Leigh would never be like that. But, she did think that people should love each other, and before he had a chance to rush in and assure her, she said that what she liked best about him was how levelheaded he was.
"Falling in love in high school is ridiculous," she said. "It's only for people who aren't serious about the future."
She was of the firm opinion that true love was impossible until after one had accomplished more important goals. It was hard to disagree with her, but it was also hard not to make fun of her, if only in private. Did she think that only people who developed a cure for cancer were allowed to fall in love?
Leigh, who wanted to have sex in the way that the sky "wants" to be blue, let her talk it out, aware that one wrong word from him might lead her to take this conversation to another candidate. He knew that what he felt for her—and by her he meant the part of Astra that was not her body, which he was close to worshiping—was a hopeless combination of gratitude and admiration. He didn't love her. She was too forbidding for that.
But he did care about her, and outside of the guys on the soccer team, she was one of the best friends he had. Astra Grein wasn't just the girl he was sleeping with—she was smart, and someone he trusted to come up with a worthwhile answer if he asked her about the way Millie was handling her father's death.
"You know, grief is so weird," Astra said. "My cousin died when she was four and my aunt never mentions her at all. She couldn't even go to the funeral, which made a lot of people mad."
"Mad?" Leigh asked. He wasn't mad at Millie for anything. He was just worried about her.
"My mom said that it made perfect sense if you knew my aunt," Astra told him, trying to explain. "But my uncle keeps a picture of my cousin in his wallet and talks about her a lot."
Leigh thought of all the different positions on a soccer team and how each involved its own strengths and skills. Everyone might have a different purpose out on the field, but they were all playing soccer. It also occurred to him that the person with whom he should discuss Millie was Maia. Not Astra. He thought it would be nice to talk to Maia. Maybe not useful or smart, but definitely something he wanted.
"Leigh, your being there is probably all Millie needs," Astra said. "You don't have to do anything extra."
He wasn't sure she was right, and asked how things were with her father and the new girlfriend.
"She's French," Astra said, after a pause. "She has two daughters."
"Are they nice?" Leigh asked, not sure that was the word he wanted to use.
"Nice enough," Astra said. "Look, I have to go."
Leigh sat on his bed for a while, holding his phone. He thought about Astra's cousin and knew that he'd have to leave Millie alone about her grief. But that didn't mean he'd have to leave her alone. Bubbles slept right outside the door of his sister's bedroom, and Leigh thought they should see if it was true that you couldn't teach an old dog new tricks. He'd do some research, and then he and Millie would have dog training sessions.
Finally, he put the phone down and lay on the floor, as if the ceiling held answers to questions he had yet to think of asking.
chapter nine
a glimmer
On the night of her actual birthday, Millie asked Maia to come to dinner. Leigh had seen her only once since his arrival, when she'd come by to ask if he would be willing to help her with Millie's birthday present. It had been a Sunday morning, so everyone was asleep except for Leigh and Bubbles, who'd run to greet Maia while she was still half a block away. Maia said she wanted to get Millie a gift certificate for a manicure and makeup consultation at the spa her mother went to.
"But it's all the way over in Bethesda so she'll need a ride,
and I was hoping that, you know, when you get your license, you won't mind driving her."
"Sure," he said, having had no idea Millie painted her nails, let alone cared about makeup. "Of course."
"Great," Maia said. "That's great."
They stood on Clayton's lawn, the morning air heavy but not yet hot and sticky, and looked at each other. She was still thin, but there was, he thought, a hint of what she really looked like. She was narrow and almost fragile, but her eyes, with their wide, even gaze, held him as strongly as any grip.
"Are you okay?" Maia asked.
"Yeah, sure," he said.
"Well, I should go," she said, smiling at him.
Her pleasure, her gratitude, and her glimmer of happiness brought to her face, to him, and to the surroundings a light that memory would never diminish.
~~~
When they met again, four years later, Leigh realized, with her hand ever so briefly in his as they shook hello, that he'd fallen in love with her—suddenly and forever—on that Sunday morning. And not, as he'd once thought, slowly and over the course of a hot, humid summer before his senior year began. Just as the huge apartment, the party, and all of New York fell away, leaving him with only his memories, so four years ago on that morning the world had vanished, leaving nothing but a girl standing in the sun, grateful for the granting of a favor.
"So you're at college in the city," she said to him, as Kathleen introduced herself to Maia's date.
"Columbia," Leigh said. "Just this past year, though. I was ... yeah, Columbia."
He would spare her the boring saga of his college career. Although, of course, she was the one who had, in many ways, shaped it. Leigh hadn't just fallen in love with Maia on that Sunday; he had stepped off his road, the one full of protection and good fortune, into a kind of violence that had brought him immeasurable joy.
"I go to Sarah Lawrence," she said, smiling brightly. "I only come into the city for ridiculous things like this. Isn't it funny that I'd see you at one of them?"
Leigh nodded and hoped his face matched hers in polite amusement.
She was wearing a black skirt and over it a long-sleeved silk blouse that fit as closely as a corset. Her heavy dark hair was slipping out of its barrettes, and her earrings sparkled against her neck. She had found a way, he saw, to turn fragility into an invitation. Everything about her whispered, Touch me, in much the same way that it had once radiated, Protect me.
It struck him that as he had failed at the latter, there would be little chance at ever again doing the former. This was a combination of regret and hope far bigger than dinner-party chatter could accommodate, and as he took his seat at the table, he slipped back to when she was still only his sister's friend.
~~~
Leigh was, he found, glad enough to see Maia again at Millie's birthday dinner, but he was mostly relieved that his father had come home from work in time for it. As they ate (meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and roasted carrots—Millie's favorites), he got, without having to ask for them, the details of what had happened to Franklin during the past year. There had been the usual things (name calling, getting shoved out of his place in line), and then worse things (someone stole his bookbag, someone else put a garter snake in his desk), all culminating in his getting locked up inside his locker.
"And, you know, he has asthma," Maia said.
"He got bad nightmares after that," Millie said. "Daddy talked to him on the phone a few times to try to help. Because he's seen all kinds of horrible things happen in school."
Leigh held his breath—it was only the second time he'd heard her mention her father since his death.
"It was really good of Seth to do that," Clayton said. "I remember he thought that maybe Franklin was in the wrong school."
"I know, and it amazed me that Park Prep could be wrong for anyone," Janet said, "but they do put a lot of emphasis on achievement."
"Wouldn't that make him really popular?" Leigh asked. "Kevin told me Franklin skipped two grades."
"One," Millie said.
"Not that kind of achievement," Maia said. "Being smart is a given. It's more what you do with it."
This made no sense, but Leigh didn't want to ask. He was nervous enough about the new school.
"Seth thought the school didn't give kids enough room to be themselves," Janet said. "Everyone has so much to do. But Millie likes it."
"I don't think it's the school," Millie said. "It's just these jerks in the eleventh grade."
"Those jerks will be in Leigh's grade this year," Maia said. "Seniors."
"So, anyway, Mrs. Staines even talked to Daddy," Millie said, "and then she quit working."
"She had a pretty cool job," Maia said. "She did fundraising."
"The firm she worked at fundraises," Clayton said. "I think she only did brochure design and things like that for them. She didn't organize the benefits."
"My mother went to a lot of those," Maia said. "Josh used to buy four or five tables for any benefit she wanted."
"Does she go to any now?" Millie asked.
"With friends, yes," Maia said. "But Charles does not go to big parties."
"That's not a bad thing," Clayton said. "He's a serious man."
They were all quiet for a minute, not wanting to draw attention to Clayton's implied judgment that Josh had not been serious. Janet had told Leigh a little about Maia's current and previous stepfathers, with Millie filling in the rest.
Maia's mother, almost three years after divorcing Josh, just as he was headed to prison, had married Charles Rhoem, who was a lawyer at the Justice Department. Maia had been in boarding school for eighth and ninth grades but jumped at the chance to move to Maryland when her mother got married (not to be with her mother or with Charles, but for the chance to visit Josh, who paid for, among other things, Maia's school tuition).
"Did you ever get to go to them?" Millie asked. "The parties?"
"Some," Maia said. "Once Mom was sick and so Josh and I went alone. It was fun."
Millie leaned forward as if to ask another question, but her mother interrupted, saying, "Let Maia eat."
"No, it's okay, I think I'm done, Ms. Davis, really."
"Did you have lunch?" Janet asked, looking at Maia's untouched meat loaf and mashed potatoes. "And a snack?"
"Uh-huh, yes," Maia said.
"Well, if you're—"
"Good," Clayton said, breaking into whatever Janet might have been about to say. "So you won't have to eat anything extra. But you need to finish."
"Mr. Hunter, please—I'm just not that hungry."
"It's not about being hungry," Clayton said.
"I know," Maia said, softly.
"So can you finish?" he asked.
"No," she said, just as softly. "No."
"You can," Janet said.
"Think of seeing Josh," Clayton said. "Remember our agreement."
"I do think of that," Maia said. "I see him on Saturdays."
"You won't if I have to call him again," Clayton said. "Your visiting him is contingent on your eating."
"You know, maybe she doesn't like meat loaf," Millie said.
Leigh, who also had been thinking that, was too amazed to speak. His father had been the one to make Maia's visits to Josh a reward for gaining weight? How odd that it should have been Clayton who came up with the idea, and yet maybe it fit.
Even Lillian said that no one was better in a crisis than Clayton. As long as he can view something as a problem, she said, then he can manage it. Meaning, of course, that he fell apart if the crisis was one in which he had to feel something, like when his mother died. Or when Janet cried because her ex-husband was dead.
"This is my favorite meal," Millie added. "Not anybody else's."
"Good point," Clayton said. "Maia, what do you feel like eating?"
The answer was obviously nothing, so Leigh piled potatoes on his empty plate and asked Janet to cut him another slice of meat l oaf.
"Remember when you used to tell me that an
ything a boy could do, a girl could do better?" he asked Millie.
"I was ten," she said indignantly, as if it were fifty years ago instead of three.
"Well, I think we should see if Maia can match me bite for bite," he said.
"Do you want something else to eat?" Clayton asked.
"I can make you grilled cheese," Janet said. "Grilled cheese and a milk shake."
These, it would turn out, were the foods Maia had the easiest time swallowing when she was stressed or unable to meet her calorie requirement.
"No, I'll just finish this," Maia said, picking up her fork.
Leigh took a bite of meat loaf. Maia did too. They followed this pattern—him, her, him, her—while Millie told Janet and Clayton about a family of raccoons she had seen near Calvert Park's tennis club. A discussion about rabies, urban sprawl, and the displacement of wildlife followed. Occasionally, Leigh would say to Maia, You're doing great. It wasn't all that different from being a field shadow to a small boy with a learning disability.
chapter ten
in bits and pieces
There was no greater joy, Leigh quickly discovered, than being able to drive people wherever they wanted to go. After getting his license, Leigh spent every dime he had on a used Toyota Camry with only 63,000 miles on it. It looked more like a family car than the dream car he'd had in mind, but both Clayton and Janet had asked him to make safety a priority, since it was likely that Millie would be a frequent passenger. And, as Clayton had pointed out, he would rather help Leigh buy a solid car than find out that his son's cheap fixer-upper had crumpled in an accident.
So, Leigh scaled back his fantasy to fit both his budget and his father's concerns. The Camry had a decent engine, even if the rest of it fell far short of amazing. And the first time he uttered the magic words Can I take you somewhere? Leigh fell totally in love with it. Its ugly purple color, its four doors, and its inability to inspire envy all faded. This was his car, and its erratic door locks and broken window controls became part of who he was, how he thought, and what he dreamed.
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