He never thought of his classes that way anymore. They were other people’s kids, in whom he had no interest and whose lives he assumed would never again intersect with his.
But there was a scrap of teacher left in him. A piece, he was surprised to find, large enough to cut. Oh, dear God, he thought, when did I stop being a teacher?
His kids had done these things. His kids, whose names he did not bother to learn, whose driving he did not bother to supervise, whose faces he made no effort to remember.
It was one of the Cristin/Kierstin/Christine crowd. One of the watery blondes who knew the rules for mailbox baseball.
I was a good person once, he thought. I was like Matt Willit. I was passionate. I taught and they learned. Why did I stop teaching math? Why did I turn to Driver’s Ed where nothing matters?
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? he thought. It matters most, and I didn’t care.
“Turn onto Cherry,” he said to Taft, “and pull over.”
He did not glance at Taft to see the boy’s expression. They got out of the car. The double post still stuck up out of the dirt: six feet of it, the top rudely sliced. Temporary blinking yellow lights on a sawhorse marked the intersection now.
Remy, Taft, Chase, and Mr. Fielding grouped around it, hands folded like people gathered at a grave. Mr. Fielding felt as if he had been at a stop sign of his own for a long time. Half dead, still teaching. Not as dead as Denise Thompson.
“Who took it?” said Mr. Fielding.
Do not panic, thought Remy. He’s guessing. He can’t even tell us from Chrystal, Carson, and Joanne. Stand still, stay calm.
“How would we know who took it?” said Taft. He moved restlessly, watching his feet as if trying to learn a dance step. Mac did that when he was guilty of something. Was Taft guilty of something or were his feet cold? Or was Taft protecting her?
They stood on the half-frozen ground until Mr. Fielding tired of staring at the post. Nobody said anything else.
Nance Campbell adored Christmas. Parties were warmer, greetings were gayer, laughter was kinder. She had a collection of decorations from all around the world. Stars and angels, candy canes and icicles and camels and candles. It took the entire first weekend in December, all four Campbells working, to decorate the house. Real holly was wound up the banisters, and wreaths hung from every door.
On their way home from the Nutcracker ballet it actually snowed a little. Flurries that didn’t count, but made Morgan’s mother happy. “Do you think we might actually have a white Christmas this year?” she said dreamily.
Dad was a ridiculous romantic. One snowless December, Dad had actually trucked in snow as a Christmas gift for Mom.
“Did you name me for Christmas, Mom?” said Starr. She asked this a lot because she liked the answer.
“I wanted a name,” said their mother softly, “that rang and sang.”
Morgan wondered what the ringing and singing would be like if they found out about the stop sign.
Dad tapped the automatic garage door opener on the visor and the long wall of the two-car garage lifted. The BMW pulled in next to the Range Rover. The garage doors closed silently behind them, and they went indoors.
What would little Bobby Thompson’s Christmas be like? Had his dead mommy already bought presents? Would Santa bring Bobby presents from a dead woman?
And Mr. Thompson, taking out those ads.
What would his Christmas be like?
His mother surprised Morgan with an intense hug, stepping back to hold his face possessively. He let her do this, and she hugged him again. “I’m so happy,” she said. “You know how sometimes your family seems perfect and the day was just right and Christmas is coming?”
She and Dad waltzed the rest of the way down the hall, through the living room and the dining room and into the front hall and through the kitchen and into the family room and back.
“Yuck,” said Starr succinctly, vanishing upstairs before she got dragged into this.
How much older Starr seemed in that dark green velvet skirt.
Denise Thompson would never get older.
“Dad,” he said, during the first slew of ads before the late news, “do you believe in church or are you just going because you’re running for office?” He recognized a flicker of hope in his father’s eyes, that this difficult son was addressing him. Not exactly your basic easy question, but still—speech.
“I guess,” said his father, “the more responsibility you take on—or, in my case, want to take on—the more help you need. Our state … has every problem there is. Race riots, lousy schools, collapsing bridges, second-rate hospitals, more immigrants than we can house. I have plans … but …”
Give me a way out, Morgan thought. A sign that I don’t have to worry about the sign.
“I don’t know what I believe,” said his father. “I don’t think most people know for sure. I only know that words of wisdom that have helped for thousands of years help me too.”
“Like what?”
His father quoted the Bible. Easily, as if he used the words all the time. “Like Micah. And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and love mercy.” The news came back on. “It helps me decide things, to say that in my mind,” said his father.
Morgan could not recall his father ever before uttering a sentence when the anchor was talking.
If the Lord requires Dad to do justly, thought Morgan, and if justice is prison … On the other hand, if the Lord also requires mercy … how much justice and how much mercy would I get?
If it’s up to Dad, I guess there would be some mercy. If it’s up to the husband, it would be all justice and no mercy. But I don’t blame him. I’d kill me, too, if I were the husband.
Mom slipped into the room, sitting next to Dad and leaning on him squishily.
The next ad was not for soft drinks or cars.
It was not an ad for profit or sales.
It was Mr. Thompson’s ad.
Morgan’s thickened fingers were so useless, he could not wrap them around his Pepsi can. It slid out of his grip, down the edge of the sofa and onto the floor. Nothing spilled. It stayed upright. It was doing better than Morgan.
The guy was paying for television time? Where did he get the money? What did he hope to accomplish?
The ad was narrated by a masculine voice that trembled with a rage Morgan well recognized. Adrenaline screaming for action, muscles requiring that he pound out of a room.
A home video, blurry and off center, filled the screen.
Denise Thompson knelt on the green grass of summer, her arms out, her hair blowing, while her little son Bobby staggered toward her. Red toddler pants, snaps on the inseam. Bobby’s hair and eyes were the same color as his mother’s.
His dead mother’s.
What have I done? How can I undo it? There must be a way to undo it!
Morgan tried to remember even a single verse from his years of Sunday school, even a single word that would help him the way Micah helped his father.
Morgan’s living mother sipped her drink. “I agree with you, Rafe. Whoever took that sign should be shot.”
CHAPTER 8
“A family conference?” said Morgan warily. He was the only family in the room.
Mr. Bailey had organized Dad’s last campaign. Mr. Bailey laughed heartily, to show that he had been sixteen once. “We’re on the same team, Mor, and we have to work up our plays.”
Morgan sat carefully on the couch. He and Mr. Bailey were in the rarely occupied formal living room. On the mantel were photographs of Morgan and Starr at various stages of braces and slow development. Morgan often considered burning the family photos.
“The thing is, Mor,” said Mr. Bailey, “you and I know that this family is beautiful. Really beautiful.” Mr. Bailey shook his head a few times to show how mind-boggling the Campbell beauty was. “But every now and then a closet that looks clean and neat is stuffed with skeletons. And the people donating to this campaign, people that have money riding
on this—they like to know. Every skeleton falls out, Mor. No matter how tight you close that door, the media get in through the cracks. So there can’t be any secrets, you know what I mean?”
His hands were puffy again, the blood from his chest rushing to his fingers, to make him sign a confession. “I guess,” he said. He hated being called Mor.
“Now, a sixteen-year-old hasn’t had time to put many skeletons in the closet, Mor.” Mr. Bailey laughed.
Morgan could see his skeleton perfectly: the long white bones of a twenty-six-year-old named Denise Thompson.
“So,” said Mr. Bailey. “You ever try drugs? Who’d you buy them from?”
Morgan wondered if anybody had ever told Mr. Bailey anything. And if so, why?
“It’s okay, son. We elected a president who tried marijuana. You can tell me about it. That’s why your mom and dad aren’t in the room. It’s just you and me, so we can line those skeletons up and put ’em out of business. You know what I mean?”
Mr. Bailey went on about alcohol and drugs, like the films in Driver’s Ed. “So you can assure me,” said Mr. Bailey, his face so close that Morgan had to lean backward to escape, “there is no scandal we have to worry about with you.”
“Scandal” sounded middle-aged. Men and women with pasts. “All I do is go to school.”
Mr. Bailey nodded down at his notebook and seemed to check data on Morgan. “That’s true,” he said. “Don’t have your driver’s license yet, do you?”
Maybe he should throw the driver’s test. The way boxers throw matches. Couldn’t be that hard to fail. Then he wouldn’t get his license, which he didn’t deserve. “Another few weeks.”
Mr. Bailey grinned widely. “Then we’ll have to keep an eye on you, won’t we?”
Morgan grinned back. He wondered if the grin looked like Lark’s. Too tight for his mouth. “Yes, sir.”
Mr. Bailey whapped him on the shoulder blades. “Great talking to you,” he said. “I’m really really really excited about this campaign. We’re gonna win, I can feel it, your dad can feel it. How about you, Morgan, can you feel it?”
If he told what he was feeling, everything would get sucked down and drowned in the whirlpool of his stupidity.
Morgan collected his shepherds and handed out staffs. The church had a nice staff collection after so many pageant years. Everybody liked to hook everybody else’s ankles and yank them down at crucial spots.
This happened only in rehearsal. During the real thing, Christmas Eve, every year, it was real. The kids really were shepherds and the baby really was Jesus. On Christmas Eve, when the congregation sang “It came upon a midnight clear,” the shepherds would shiver, full of belief.
This, however, was rehearsal. The boys could hardly wait for the third line in the song, “peace on the earth, goodwill toward men,” so they could bellow the time-honored substitution, “piss on the earth.”
The crèche was up. Bales of hay rested below the altar. Kings’ costumes were draped over the first pew.
That’s what I did, Morgan thought. Pissed on the earth.
“Mom!” bellowed Mac. “We could bake pottery in here! Turn down the heat!” She didn’t, so he leaned between the front seats to adjust the car heater himself. “Remy, when you get your license, I’m in charge of temperature,” he said to his sister.
She didn’t even hear him. Remy’s crush on Morgan Campbell was sickening. How could his own sister fall for one of those blond preppies of perfection? Now she was even going down to the church on a Thursday afternoon to help polish the Christmas silver, a feeble excuse to feast her eyes on Morgan at a dumb old pageant rehearsal. Everybody but goody-goody Mrs. Willit saw through Morgan. “Pageant Director” would look good on his college application.
“Mom, you know that wrecked car on the high school lawn?” said Mac. He gave Matt an Oreo cookie because then Matt would be completely covered with chocolate saliva by the time they reached the church. “The one where the woman was killed because somebody stole the stop sign? I’d sue ’em, that’s what I’d do. Sue ’em for a million bucks.”
“If it was kids, they don’t have any money,” said Mom.
Mac shrugged. He knew about deep pockets. “The parents do. I say sue ’em.” It dawned on Mac that Remy did not have free Thursday afternoons. “Hey, Remy, what about basketball practice?”
“I quit.”
Mom practically went off the road. “What?” she cried. “Remy! You quit basketball? Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“You quit JV?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Tell me why! Your father and I love those games, Remy! How can you do this to us?”
“I’m not good enough.”
This was true, and yet because Mac knew either everything about his sister or nothing, and in this case it was everything, he knew that she was lying. She had not quit because she was lousy at it. So she had quit her basketball team, after all these years of effort and practice, in order to hang out and stare at Morgan!
“Sue her,” Mac told his mother helpfully.
Remy could not figure out why nobody from Driver’s Ed had called in to get the reward Mr. Thompson was offering. Money motivated people. Look at Mac, so eager to sue, to hop on that good old American bandwagon, grab his share in the lawsuit. Any lawsuit.
Last night she had stood in front of the mirror staring at her hair: the short quick gold hair she usually approved of. A single strand had grown too long. She cut it off with embroidery scissors and suddenly wanted to cut it all off, hack it off, scrape it off, look hideous and ridiculous and guilty. She had stood trembling, a hank of hair in her left hand, scissors held open in her right.
She had not done it. The thing was to blend in, to be one of the crowd, as invisible to the world as she and her classmates were to Mr. Fielding.
“I don’t want Henry being Jesus this year, Mom. Let them use a doll. Or the Van Holland baby. You know Henry won’t behave. You know he’s more like a difficult pet than a person.”
“Remy!”
“Well, he is! Stop pretending he’s different from anybody else’s one-year-old. He’s all mess and noise and smell.”
Mom parked at the church back door. The church was pure white, reassuringly symmetrical whether you came in at the back, side, or front.
Somebody would call Mr. Thompson. Somebody would want money enough to do it. Remy didn’t want it on TV that the Marland family was so screwed up, one kid was out there killing while the other was playing Jesus.
Starr had been an angel for years. At last she’d get the scarlet cape, which would fill the aisle behind her like a princess’s wedding train. “Ugh, you two are the other kings?” said Starr, gagging at the sight of Roger and Kyle.
“I’m only kinging because my mother’s making me,” said Kyle.
“And I get the red one, Starr, so keep your mitts off it,” said Roger.
“Morgan!” screamed Starr. “I get the red cape.”
The sheep got down on their hands and knees and the shepherds herded them with resounding whacks on exposed limbs.
Mrs. Marland set the baby down. Henry took off at full speed, which was a lot faster than Morgan expected. Henry crashed into a pew, picked himself up, climbed onto the pew, clambered along it, fell off, opened a hymnbook, tore out pages, crawled out of reach, laughed joyfully, crawled under the next pew, and found another hymnbook to deface.
This is Jesus, thought Morgan. Wonderful. Maybe we could sedate him prior to the pageant. Jesus the tranquilized.
“Remy,” said Mrs. Willit affectionately, “I can always count on you. Who else would agree to do this?”
Remy had propped the kitchen door, the hall door, and the sanctuary door open so she could watch Morgan as she polished. When Morgan saw her, they waved Royal Family waves back and forth.
Her heart turned over.
Going out with Morgan. I wonder if we actually will. Go out, that is. Or if we’ll just say so to other people, and li
e, and lie, and lie some more.
Our wave, thought Morgan. Our joke. Our stop sign.
The stop sign had moved. It was not hidden in the basement. It was between him and Remy. He wanted to steal it a second time—destroy it—set fire to it. Anything to go on with life.
And every time he thought that, he remembered that Denise Thompson could not go on with her life.
Generations ago somebody had given the church Christmas silver: plates and chalices heavily embossed with stars. It had been lying around for decades getting black with tarnish. Mrs. Willit wanted to use the stuff this year. She and Remy struggled with polish, old toothbrushes, paper towels, soap and water.
“I love how tarnish disappears,” said Mrs. Willit, admiring the sparkle. “Isn’t it a great metaphor? From tarnish to treasure. I’ll use that in my next sermon. Polish takes away sin.”
Remy, whose hand was full of filthy paper towels, stared at Mrs. Willit and knew something.
Mrs. Willit had never done anything wrong. Oh, she’d probably been mean to somebody once, or even shoplifted a lipstick. But if she had done anything truly wrong, she’d know polish didn’t take anything away. It just moved it around. And saying you’re sorry—that didn’t take anything away. Didn’t even move it around.
Remy was sorry, and Denise Thompson was still dead.
Remy hadn’t even read the single word on that sign, had done nothing by intent, and Denise Thompson was still dead.
“Come on, Remy, let’s go,” said her mother. “I’m still provoked with you for quitting basketball. It ruined the whole rehearsal for me.”
Henry had reached the toddler stage of exhaustion in which nothing was left but whining. Only sleep could solve his problems but he was too hungry and too wired. They’d have to endure his screams and sobs and hitting until he collapsed.
Remy rubbed his little back, which sometimes calmed him.
I could baby-sit for Bobby Thompson, she thought. I have lots of experience. I could work off guilt that way. Kind of like going to a gym and working off flab.
How obscene. She would snuggle a little boy whose mother lay in a grave because of her?
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