Criss Cross

by Lynne Rae Perkins

  They got it into a small rocking movement, and from inside the cab Debbie could hear Lenny saying, “This is good. Just keep doing it.”

  Her right hand was on the knob of the stick and her feet were in position. In her mind she went through what Lenny had told her to do. The truck began moving, in just one direction, not rocking anymore, but rolling down the gentle grade of the gravel driveway. Slowly, then a little faster. Methodically she followed Lenny’s instructions. The truck was almost to the street when the engine turned over. She shifted into neutral, revved the engine a little, and put on the brakes just as the truck reached the other side of the street. A piece of cake. There was nothing to it. She saw Patty standing there and realized that she had forgotten to look to her to make sure no one was coming. Oops.

  “It worked,” she said to Lenny, as he arrived at the window.

  “We got lucky,” said Lenny.

  “What do you mean, ‘lucky'?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t always work, that’s all.”

  Lenny decided they should listen to the show while driving around the Boney Dump at the end of the street, to charge up the battery. When they got there, he decided he might as well teach Debbie how to do a three-point turn. They drove around and around, back and forth. Phil and Hector rode in the back, listening through the window that opened in the back of the cab.

  Suddenly the sound of the engine sputtered and died. The truck rolled to a quiet stop. Hector and Phil heard Lenny say, “Shit!” and then they heard him say, “Excuse me.”

  Phil called out, “What happened?”

  “We’re out of gas,” said Lenny. “I can’t believe it.”

  He got out and grabbed a gas can from the back, and they all set off across the cindery expanse, toward the next outpost of civilization, a low clump of trees and buildings where there was a Sinclair station.

  As they crunched along over the cinders, Lenny fished in his pockets for money. He turned to Patty, who was crunching nearby, and said, “Do they have penance at your church?”

  CHAPTER 22

  Wuthering Heights/Popular Mechanics

  Debbie was reading Wuthering Heights. Physically, she was in the backyard under a tree, with more backyards in all directions but one, all cluttered with picnic tables, clotheslines, grills, garbage cans, lawn chairs, wading pools, patios. Petunias. Tomato plants. Sprinklers. But otherwise, she was out on the moors with Catherine, crying Heathcliff’s name out into the blinding storm. Their rough and wild childhood friendship had deepened into love, but Catherine had become engaged to someone else who was more educated, refined, and wealthy. And Heath-cliff had gone away. There was more to it than that, but still, Debbie wondered at how Cathy could marry Linton. She didn’t think money and refinement mattered to her the way it did to Cathy. If she liked someone, she would like them. That was all that would matter.

  She looked up from her book. Lenny was working on his dirt bike. She watched him for a few minutes. He was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves chopped off, and she noticed that he had muscles in his arms. When had that happened, she wondered. Lenny had never been athletic. It must be related to the gearhead phase he was going through.

  She wished for a moment that she lived in another century, in another country, with moors and mansions and elegant ways of speaking and complicated romantic clothing: cloaks with hoods, velvet, riding boots. Wool shawls and handkerchiefs. A world where she didn’t even know what all the words meant. Like, what was dimity? And what exactly was a fortnight? She hadn’t gotten around to looking them up; she just guessed and kept reading.

  A lot would depend, of course, on whether you were born in the mansion or the hovel.

  And, if she had been born in another century, she would now be dead, and she liked it that she was, at this moment, alive.

  Cathy, she thought, had never experienced the freedom of wearing cut-offs all summer. Of riding a bike. The pleasure of a Coke poured over ice. She went into the house to get one.

  Lenny was eating a ham sandwich at the kitchen table. He was reading about solenoids in Popular Mechanics, or trying to. Blinding stripes of sunlight blasting through the Venetian blinds were causing blinking afterimages to dance around in his eyeballs. It was a trippy effect. He reached for the string to adjust the angle of the slats. When they were horizontal, and his eyes stopped freaking out, he noticed that Debbie was sitting under the tree in the Pelbrys’ backyard, reading a book. Lenny felt a neighborly urge to go do something in his own backyard. Work on the dirt bike, maybe. He set his dish in the sink, took what was left of the sandwich outside, and bounced down onto the patio where he sat on the old glider, chewing and looking at his bike. He wasn’t sure what to do to it. It was already perfect. Just for fun, he decided he would change the front fork fluid.

  Immediately he was absorbed in the pleasure of his task, only somewhat aware of the bright sun that poured down on his shoulders and made him squint, and the concrete paving bricks under his knees that made him periodically shift his position. He decided he would also adjust the chain. He loosened the rear axle nut and the chain adjuster, moved the swing arm back to tighten the chain, then tightened the axle nut back up again. Finishing, Lenny realized he was thirsty and stood up. The backyard rematerialized. The lawn chair under the Pelbrys’ tree was empty. Something about that was disappointing. He looked at it for a minute without remembering why, then opened the screen door and went inside to get something to drink.

  CHAPTER 23

  The childhood Friend

  Debbie’s thoughts drifted from the conversation. When they drifted back, it wasn’t to listen, but to watch Phil’s hands. She had never noticed how much he moved them around, talked with them, when he was excited about something, maybe because that was almost never. Normally he was so calm and even. Now his face was animated, and his hands darted and swooped like birds flying from perch to perch in the trees. She also noticed a mosquito bite starting to

  bleed down his forehead, like a war wound. But it was his hands that briefly hypnotized her. They were expressive, and she hadn’t ever thought of Phil as expressive.

  She felt she was seeing a hidden part of him. The thought came to her that maybe Phil was the childhood friend she was destined to fall in love with. As soon as she thought it, she saw him differently. She saw the handsomeness in his features, the interestingness of his personality. When Phil’s eyes met hers, she looked away quickly, suddenly self-conscious. It was completely stupid, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it.

  She looked at her knee, where there was a scabbed scratch. She looked at a rose-of-Sharon bush in Lenny’s yard, lit to muted green brilliance on one side by the streetlight, the other side lost in the darkness. From up and down the street came ripples of conversations on porches.

  Lenny was talking now and, listening once more, Debbie remembered the reason she had stopped paying attention in the first place. They were talking about a movie she hadn’t seen, going into rapturous detail about car chases and explosions and secret agent-type stunts involving helicopters, boats, and doing things while dangling from ropes. Expressive hand gestures.

  Debbie decided that Phil probably did have hidden depths, but this wasn’t them. The romance, which had blossomed entirely inside her own head, faded. No one knew about it but her, and it all happened in less than five minutes. She was relieved that it was over, but now there was nothing to do but listen to the boring conversation.

  Hector was sitting next to her on the curb. Patty had gone home a while ago. Hector appeared to be listening attentively to Lenny and Phil.

  “Which do you like better,” he said to Debbie. “Listening to people talk about movies you haven’t seen, or listening to people try to remember what they dreamed last night?”

  Debbie laughed.

  “It always seems interesting when you’re the one who’s telling it, though,” she said.

  “That’s true,” said Hector. “My grandmother
thinks people are really interested in hearing about all of her surgeries.”

  “My great-aunt thinks we really want to know that our fourth cousin got a job selling shoes in a department store.”

  “My mother thinks people really want to know how she made the Jell-O salad.”

  Debbie laughed again. “Probably some people do want to know that,” she said. “My mother would want to know.”

  “Would you, though?” asked Hector.

  “No,” said Debbie. “But I would eat some if it’s the kind that has those little mandarin oranges in it.”

  “It’s not,” said Hector. “It has grated carrots in it. And celery.”

  “Oh. Then I wouldn’t eat some, I don’t think.”

  A few honking guffaws came from Lenny and Phil. They were still talking about their movie. Or something.

  “So,” said Hector, “have you had any interesting dreams lately?”

  Debbie looked at him.

  “I don’t think I would tell you even if I did,” she said.

  CHAPTER 24

  Grosi

  Peter Bruning woke up and he didn’t know where he was. He was in a strange bed, in a strange room. A strange-looking branch snaked by outside the window, maybe attached to whatever tree was filling the room with dim green humid light, or maybe not.

  Somewhere not too far away, a vacuum cleaner whined and droned. The sound of it rose and sank as it turned corners, dove down under furniture and pulled back out, clattered from carpet onto the wood floor. Then it stopped. The room was now familiar, and Peter remembered that he was in his grandmother’s house. Grosi’s house. For Grossmutter. There was his suitcase on the floor, unlatched, airline tags sprouting from the handle.

  He remembered now that he and his parents had stopped here last night on their way from the airport to his aunt and uncle’s house, where they stayed during their visits. They never stayed at Grosi’s. There were various reasons for this, but the main one was that she drove Peter’s father, who was her son, nuts. It was a mutual feeling. He drove her nuts, too. Peter’s mother’s theory was that they were too much alike. They were both alpha males. That was her joke.

  Grosi had made dinner for them, roast beef and potatoes with gravy. Carrots and cabbage. Corn pudding with heavy cream. Lettuce with hot bacon and bacon grease on it. Tapioca with canned peaches in syrup.

  After dinner, as Peter’s parents tried to cancel out the heaviness of the meal by taking their coffee black, they brought up the topic they had been talking about with each other, and over the phone with the aunts and uncles, in the preceding weeks. The topic of how Grosi might want to move into an apartment. Where everything was all on one floor. She wouldn’t have to climb steps and it wouldn’t be so much work to take care of. It would be so much easier for her, with her arthritis and everything else.

  There was that Senior Citizens Tower they were putting up in Birdvale, what about that? It looked really nice, and it was so close to everything. The grocery store, the post office. A bank. She wouldn’t even have to drive.

  As they talked, Peter watched his grandmother, and he could see that his grandmother would rather drop dead. She sat like a stone, her hands folded in her lap. A ruse to conceal the fact that she could no longer completely unfold them.

  “I’m fine here,” she said. “I have someone coming to help me with things. A girl. She comes once a week.”

  “A girl can’t do everything that needs to be done around here, Mother,” said Peter’s father. “What about your windows? If you don’t get paint on them, they’re going to rot. There are three years of leaves in your gutters; they’re about to fall off the house. And you need a new roof. A girl coming once a week can’t do all of that.”

  “I could,” said Peter. “I mean, I bet I could do some of it. A lot of it. Maybe not the roof.”

  He hadn’t planned to say it. It just came out.

  His mother ignored him.

  “And what if you fall,” she said. “What about your sugar, and your heart?”

  Grosi ignored her. She turned to Peter.

  “Why don’t you stay here with me for a few days?” she said. “Can you do that? You can do a few little jobs for me, then tell everyone how fine I am.”

  She was asking him for help. She needed an ally. She needed her house. If you put her in an anonymous little apartment somewhere, she might disappear. Evaporate. Peter couldn’t believe his parents were even suggesting it.

  “Okay, Grosi,” he said. “I can stay here all week.”

  He felt he was honoring an ancient, unspoken pact.

  His father raised his eyebrows. His mother just looked at him. When they left for the evening, Peter followed them out to get his bag from the car.

  “It’s just postponing the inevitable,” he heard his father say.

  “Let him spend a week here,” said his mother. “Then he’ll see.”

  That’s why he was here. He reached for his glasses and looked around the room for a clock. He didn’t feel quite as noble as he had last night. He would be here for one week, and he didn’t really know what he would be able to do. He hadn’t had much experience at being useful.

  Mrs. Bruning had trouble falling asleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation with her son and the California wife. Three times she turned on the bedside lamp and read, trying to put it out of her thoughts so she could drift off. Twice she tried the Reader’s Digest. Usually she found it very useful as a sleeping aid. The first time she went through and read all of the funny stories. The second time she read quite a bit of the condensed novel at the end. It was a humorous one, which she liked better than the heartwarming or inspirational ones.

  Both times she thought she had banished the conversation to the depths where it belonged, but each time it crept back in, hiding inside some innocent thought and then jumping out at her, like soldiers from their Trojan horse.

  She worked her way up once more to a sitting position and turned on the light. She put on her thick glasses and sat there, for a moment, looking around the room. She liked it, even in the semidarkness. Especially in the semidarkness. Dim lighting was better for old things. For old furniture and old people. For people as old as me, she thought, pitch black is probably best. She had a silent laugh at her little joke.

  She didn’t like new buildings. They didn’t feel right to her. They didn’t smell right or sound right. And she didn’t want to have to go on an elevator every time she went in or out. Why should she be stranded in some claustrophobic white box up on the umpteenth floor, surrounded by senile nincompoops? She wasn’t going to do it.

  This Peter, this grandson she had barely recognized when he walked in the door, wanted to help her. She didn’t know what he was capable of, but he was on her side. And the Debbie girl was coming tomorrow. She liked Debbie. The girl had a spark. She kept it under a bushel most of the time, but Louise Bruning could spot it. She would like to fan the little spark. She thought it would be a good idea to set the bushel on fire and burn it right up. The world had enough sheep in it already.

  The three of them would get the house back in shape, she decided. She knew she had let things go, and they couldn’t do it all, but they could show her children that she could still manage.

  Having a plan made her feel better. She reached for the Readers Digest again, then decided against it. Instead she picked up a book someone had given her that, from what she could gather, was about a seagull who was some kind of a deep thinker. It worked even better than the Reader’s Digest. She didn’t finish two pages before her eyes closed. Soft, warm sleep welcomed her in at last. Dawn was only a couple of hours away, and it wasn’t going to be enough, but she would have to take what she could get.

  When Peter came down, barefoot, into his grandmother’s kitchen, the bottom half of a girl was sticking out from under the kitchen sink. He was pretty sure it was a girl. He blinked, then yawned. They were girl legs, and girl tennis shoes. She was doing something under there. As he waited
for this to make sense, the rest of the girl worked her way out and stood up. She had a tool in one hand, some weird type of wrench, and when she saw Peter she froze, like a startled bunny. He couldn’t help smiling.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m—this is my grandmother’s house. I’m Peter. Or Pete. Peter.”

  She said, “Oh.” Then she said, “Hi.”

  She looked uncertain. Maybe she couldn’t decide what her name was, either. The startled bunny expression had given way to a blush.

  “You must be ‘The Debbie Girl,'” he said.

  She nodded and said, “Uh-huh.”

  “Grosi told me you were coming,” he said. “What is that thing, anyway? What were you doing under there?”

  “It’s a basin wrench,” said Debbie. “The faucet was dripping.”

  She was glad to have something specific to say.

  “Wow,” said Peter. “You know how to fix that?”

  “I think so,” she said. “I helped my dad do it once.” She was still blushing. She was a blusher. A shy blusher. Peter decided to keep asking her questions.

  “Where’s my grandmother?” he asked. “Is she awake yet?”

  “No,” said Debbie. “I’m kind of surprised. She usually is, by this time.”

  “Oh, good,” he said. “That means I can eat breakfast before she puts me to work.”

  He started poking around in the cupboards. He opened the refrigerator and stood there with the door open. Debbie had returned to her plumbing job. She was turning the faucet on and off and watching it.

  “I could have toast with jam,” he said. “If I could find some bread. Or I could have cereal, if I could find some milk.”

  He hadn’t considered the possibility that he might starve here. Where, oh where, were the foods of yesteryear? Or even last night? The cupboard was bare. He saw a small bowl of chilled mashed potatoes from last night’s dinner and another that held what was left of the cooked cabbage. There was a cluster of bottles that he supposed were medicine of some kind. He wondered how cereal would taste with Cremora. If he added some water, maybe.