Labor Day

by Joyce Maynard

  There was the word again that got me every time. I studied her face, to see if I could detect any sign of a lie. I looked at Frank then, still washing dishes.

  Until this moment, I hadn’t noticed, but he looked different. He had the same face, of course, and the same tall, lean, muscled body. But his hair, that had been brown and gray, was all black now. Dyed. Even his eyebrows. He looked a little like Johnny Cash. I knew his records from back when Evelyn and Barry used to come over. For some reason, Barry loved Live from Folsom Prison, so we had played it all the time.

  Now I pictured the three of us on an island somewhere—Prince Edward Island, come to think of it. My mother would have a flower garden and play her cello. Frank would paint people’s houses and fix things. At night, he’d cook for us, and after dinner, in our little farmhouse, we’d sit around and play cards. It would be all right that the two of them slept together. I would be older. I’d have a girlfriend of my own, and go off in the woods with her, or out on some bluff by the ocean, where the Gulf Stream flowed by. When she came out of the water, naked, I’d hold the towel for her and dry her off.

  I need to ask your permission, Frank said. You are your mother’s whole family. We’d need your OK on this.

  She was holding his hand as he spoke. But she was holding mine also, and for that moment at least, it seemed possible, seemed to make sense even, that a person could love her son and love her lover, and nobody would come up short. We’d all be happy. Her being happy was only a good thing for me. Our finding each other—not just him finding her, but all three of us—was the first true piece of good luck in any of our lives in a long time.

  Yes, I said. It’s OK with me. Canada.

  CHAPTER 18

  YOU WOULDN’T HAVE THOUGHT IT COULD get any hotter, but it did. That night was so hot, I didn’t even put a sheet on top of myself, I just lay on top of the bed in my boxers, with a wet rag on my stomach and a glass of ice water next to the bed. I would have thought my mother and Frank would take a night off from their usual activities, but if anything, the heat just seemed to make them more crazed than ever.

  The other nights, they had seemed to have waited until they thought I was asleep before they started, but maybe because they’d talked to me about getting married and all of us going to Canada together—because I’d given them my blessing, you might say—they started in before I even had my light turned off.

  Adele. Adele. Adele.

  Frank.

  His low growling Johnny Cash voice. Hers, soft and breathless. First soft, then louder. Then the headboard against the wall. Her bird cry. His, like a dog that was having a dream about a bone someone gave him once, reliving how it felt, sucking out the juice.

  Lying there in the damp heat, the air so still the curtains didn’t move, I thought about Eleanor, to get my mind off things. Except for how skinny she was, she was pretty. Or maybe not pretty, but there was a kind of energy field around her. You could imagine getting an electric shock just from touching her, but not necessarily in a bad way. When she kissed me, she tasted like Vicks VapoRub. Eucalyptus. She had put her tongue in my ear.

  She was also a little crazy, but this might have been good news. If she was a regular girl she’d understand—or if she didn’t yet she’d find out soon—that being friends with me would be a poor strategic move for establishing her own social standing at our school. I had pointed this out to her already at the library, but she just looked at me.

  You might not want to be seen talking to me once school starts, I told her. The popular kids will think you’re a loser.

  She said, Why would I want to be friends with those people?

  Now I imagined the two of us kissing some more, only not standing up this time. Lying down. She had her hands on my head and her fingers were raking through my hair. She was like a stray cat, underfed and skittish, with a kind of forest wildness. She might run away. Or she could pounce. You never knew if she would lick your face or run her claws over your skin and draw blood.

  I pictured her pulling her shirt off. She didn’t even wear a bra. No need. But her breasts, which I had assumed were totally flat, actually curved up slightly off her chest, and she had small pink nipples that stood out more than you’d think, like push pins.

  You can kiss them, she said.

  In the next room, that was what Frank and my mother were doing, probably, but I didn’t want to think about it, so I tuned back in to the Eleanor channel.

  Where would you like me to put my mouth? she said.

  In the morning, the coffee smell. Frank had found some wild blueberries in the scrub at the end of our yard, that he used for pancakes. Too bad we don’t have maple syrup, he said. Back on the farm with his grandparents, they had tapped their trees and boiled it in a sap house every March. Some they boiled down for maple cream that they spread on the biscuits.

  I’ll work so hard once we get to Canada, he said. I want you to have everything. A nice kitchen. A porch. A high bed with a window looking out to some rolling fields. Next summer, I’ll plant a garden.

  You and me, buddy, he said. We can get some serious baseball time in. Come spring, I’ll have you so you could field a bullet if it landed in your glove.

  THERE IS A CERTAIN KIND OF scene they have in movies, to show people falling in love. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would be a good example, but there are plenty more. Instead of going through all the particulars, they just play some catchy romantic song and while it’s going, you’re seeing the two people having all this fun together: riding bicycles and running through a field holding hands, or eating ice cream, or going around on a carousel. They’re in a restaurant and he’s feeding her spaghetti off his fork. They’re in a rowboat, and it tips over, but when their heads come up out of the water they’re laughing. Nobody drowns. Everything’s perfect, and even when things get messed up like the boat tipping over, there’s something perfect about that too.

  That day, you could have made one of those movie segments about us, only instead of two people falling in love it would be three people, turning into a family. Corny but true, starting with the pancakes and going on from there.

  After we cleared the dishes, Frank and I played catch again for a while, and he told me how much better I was getting, which was true. Then my mother came out, and we washed the car together, and just as we were finishing up, she turned the hose on Frank and me, so we got soaked, but because of how hot it was, that just felt good. Then Frank took the hose from my mother and squirted water onto her, which got her so wet she had to go in and change, and she told us to come in and wait downstairs, and she put on this fashion show. Really the fashion show was for Frank, but I liked seeing it too—the way she sashayed around the room in one outfit after another, like a model on a runway, or a girl in the Miss America pageant.

  A lot of the clothes she put on to show him were things I’d never seen her wear, probably because she’d never had the occasion. You could tell he loved it and in a different way from him, I did too. She was so pretty, I felt proud of her. I also liked seeing how happy she looked. Not only because I wanted her to be happy, which I did, but because seeing her that way took me off the hook. I didn’t have to be so worried all the time or trying to figure out ways to cheer her up.

  Lunchtime, Frank made another of his amazing soups, out of potatoes and onions this time, that he served cold, which was perfect for a day like that. After, my mother decided to give him a haircut. Then Frank said he thought I should get a haircut and he gave me one. He was surprisingly good at this. At the prison, he said, he cut everyone’s hair. They weren’t allowed to have scissors, but there was one guy on the cellblock who had a pair that he hid inside a loose piece of cement in the yard.

  Frank hardly ever said anything about where he’d spent the last eighteen years, but he told us about how, after one of the guards found the scissors, and they all had to go back to prison buzz cuts, the men used to reminisce about the good old days when Frank cut their hair.

  My
mother taught him how to dance the Texas two-step, though he couldn’t really dance too well yet because of his leg.

  As soon as I’m all mended up, Adele, he told her, I’m taking you out on the town.

  This would be in Canada.

  It was so hot, we weren’t hungry for dinner, but my mother made popcorn, with melted butter, and we laid pillows on the floor in front of the TV set and watched a movie, Tootsie.

  That’s what we could do, when we cross the border, my mother said to Frank. Dress you up like a woman. You could wear one of my costumes.

  Her saying that brought us back to how things were for us. For one day, we had gotten to act like we were these three carefree people with no troubles bigger than getting the garbage disposal unclogged, but when the picture came to us, of crossing the border into a different country, with a carload of everything we had in the world, from our old lives, and no idea where we were headed except away, a silence came over us.

  Trying to break it, maybe, my mother said, Dustin Hoffman looks sort of nice as a woman.

  I’m more the Jessica Lange type, I said.

  I’m more the Adele type, Frank said.

  After the movie was over, I told them I was tired, and headed up the stairs, but not really to bed. I sat for a while at my desk. I was thinking I should write my father a letter. I figured I wouldn’t see him for a long time, and even though the times when I did see him were hardly ever good, I still felt sad.

  Dear Dad, I wrote. I can’t say where I’m going right now but I don’t want you to worry.

  Dear Dad, I started again. You might not be hearing from me for a while.

  I want you to know, I really appreciate all the times you took me out for dinner.

  I want you to know, I appreciate when you helped me with my science project.

  I know how hard you worked to bring us all to Disney World.

  I’m happy you’ve got some other kids around, to keep you busy.

  I don’t blame you for anything.

  Sometimes it’s a good thing for people not to see each other for a while. When they get back together, they have a lot of things to tell each other.

  You don’t have to worry about me, I wrote. I’m going to be fine.

  Say good-bye to Richard and Chloe for me. Also Marjorie.

  I had hesitated a long time, when I got to the bottom of the page. I decided on Sincerely yours. Then just Sincerely. Then I crossed that out. Then I thought about how stupid it would look, having a cross-out, and how, if he looked close, he’d still make out the word I’d written in the first place, and wrote Yours truly. Safer than the alternative, which had been Love.

  CHAPTER 19

  TUESDAY MORNING. SCHOOL WAS SUPPOSED to start the next day. My mother was cleaning out the refrigerator. She had started boxing things up to take in the car, but there was surprisingly little. Our dishes had come from the Goodwill. A couple of pots and pans, also nothing special. The coffeepot.

  We’d take her tape player, but not the television. I had turned it on when I came down, to keep me company while I ate my cereal. Jerry Lewis had signed off, finally, but now we had Regis and Kathie Lee checking in.

  I won’t miss that sound, my mother said about the TV set. On Prince Edward Island, we can listen to the birds.

  You know what we’ll do, Henry? she said. We’ll get you a violin. We’ll find an old Canadian fiddle player to teach you how to play.

  She wasn’t bringing her cello since it didn’t actually belong to her, though considering the other major law we were breaking, by crossing the border with Frank, I wouldn’t have thought stealing a rental cello was such a big deal. Never mind, she said. I’ll get one up there. Full size this time. We can play together, once you learn your violin.

  One thing she felt bad about was abandoning all our supplies—the year’s inventory of paper towels and toilet paper, our store of Campbell’s soup. Frank said there was no room in the car for those, and anyway, if they stopped us at the border to look through what we had, it would look suspicious. She could bring some of her clothes but not everything. All her wonderful dancing outfits—sparkly skirts and scarves, hats with silk flowers, tap shoes and her soft leather ballet slippers and the high heels she used to wear when she went tango dancing. She’d have to pick out just a few favorites. No room for more.

  She had to bring our photograph albums. Almost nothing from her own childhood, but half a dozen leather volumes documenting mine, though in every picture where my father appeared, she had taken a razor blade and cut out his face. In a couple of the pictures where I appeared—at age two, age three, age four—she was wearing a baggy top indicating a pregnancy. Then you turned the page, and no baby. Though in the back of one volume, there was a footprint, no bigger than a stamp. Fern.

  In my case, there wasn’t all that much I cared about, to pack. My Chronicles of Narnia and my Giant Treasury of Magic Tricks and, from when I was little, Pokey Little Puppy and Curious George. My poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue.

  When you got down to it, the main thing I cared about was Joe. Except for when we brought him home from the pet store, he’d never ridden in a car before, but I figured I could take him out of his cage if he got scared, and just hold him under my shirt, where he could feel my heart. I liked to do that sometimes, even when we weren’t going anyplace. I could feel his too, faster than mine, under his soft silky fur.

  He hadn’t been doing well in the heat wave. It had been a couple of days since he’d shown any interest in his wheel. He just lay around on the floor of the cage, panting, with a glassy expression. He hadn’t touched his food. I had fed him some water with an eyedropper, because the effort required to get up and drink had seemed too much for him.

  I’m worried about Joe, I told my mother that morning. I wouldn’t want to take him in the car till the weather cools down.

  We need to talk about that, Henry, she said. I don’t think they allow hamsters to cross the border.

  We’ll have to smuggle him, I said. I can put him under my shirt. I was already planning to carry him there so he wouldn’t be scared.

  If they found Joe, they’d start checking everything out. Pretty soon they’d discover about Frank. The police would arrest him. They’d send us back.

  He’s part of our family. We can’t leave him.

  We’ll find him a good home, she said. Maybe the Jervises would like him for their grandchildren.

  I looked at Frank. He was down on the floor, scrubbing the linoleum. They wanted to leave everything looking really nice, my mother had said. She didn’t want people talking about her. Now he was holding a knife, running it along the place where the tile met the drywall, to dig out any built-up dirt. He didn’t look up, didn’t meet my eyes. My mother was rubbing steel wool over the toaster oven, over and over, in the same spot.

  If Joe doesn’t go, neither do I, I told her. He’s the one thing I care about here.

  She knew better than to say we’d get another hamster. Or a dog, even though I’d always wanted one.

  You never even asked me if I minded not seeing my dad anymore, I said. Some people get to have brothers and sisters. All I have is Joe.

  I knew what that would do to her. On the outside, the parts of her face all stayed in the same position, but it was as if someone injected a chemical in her at that moment, with some strange and terrible toxic effect. Like her skin froze.

  It could ruin everything, she said. Her voice was so quiet now I could barely hear. You’re asking me to put a man I love in jeopardy for a hamster.

  I hated how ridiculous she made it sound. Like my whole life was based on a joke.

  Only the things you care about are important, I said. You and him. All you want to do is get into bed with him and fuck.

  It was not a word I’d ever used before. It was not a word I’d ever heard spoken in our house. Until I heard it coming out of my mouth, I would not have believed a word could possess so much power.

  I remembered the ti
me she poured the milk on the floor, and another time—so long ago the memory was like an old Polaroid photograph that’s almost faded out—where she had sat in the closet with some kind of cloth over her eyes, with a sound coming out of her like a dying animal. Much later I realized, this must have been after the baby died. The last one. Until this moment, I’d forgotten it, but now I could see her squatting on the floor, with the coats hanging over her, and our winter boots jumbled up on the floor around her, along with an umbrella and the hose of the vacuum cleaner. It was a sound like nothing I’d heard before, and after hearing it I had flung myself on top of her as if I could plug it up. I put my hand over her mouth and rubbed my shirt on her face, but the sound kept coming.

  This time, there was no sound. That turned out to be worse. This was how I pictured Hiroshima, which I did a report on once, after they dropped the bomb. Wherever a person was when it happened, they remained frozen there, with the skin melting off their face, and their eyes staring.

  My mother stood there. She was still holding the toaster oven. She was barefoot, with a rag in her hand from cleaning out the crumbs. She didn’t move.

  Frank was the one who spoke. He set down the knife and got up off the floor and wrapped his long arm around her shoulders.

  It’s all right, Adele, he said. We can work this out. We’ll bring the hamster. But Henry, I’m asking you to apologize to your mother.

  I went up to my room. I started taking my clothes out of the drawers. T-shirts of sports teams I didn’t care about. A baseball cap from a Red Sox game my father took Richard and me to see, where I took out my puzzle book in the seventh inning. A couple of letters from Arak, the African pen pal, who we’d lost track of a couple of years back. A piece of pyrite I had believed, when I was little, to be gold. I had this idea when I got it that someday I’d sell it and make a whole lot of money and take my mother on an amazing trip. Somewhere like New York City or Las Vegas, where they’d have dancing. Not Prince Edward Island.