Criss Cross

by Lynne Rae Perkins

  Rowanne laughed. “Camouflage by afghan,” she said.

  “Something like that,” said Debbie. “Anyway, I stopped taking piano lessons around then. I wasn’t practicing, and it seemed silly to be paying for lessons. But a few months later old Mrs. Spransy died. And a few months after that, Miss Spransy got married. She got married to a truck driver she met at a bowling alley, maybe in her navy blue dress with tiny white polka dots and her folded Kleenex tucked up her sleeve. I couldn’t imagine her picking up something heavy like a bowling ball, let alone throwing it. I couldn’t imagine her striking up a conversation with some big bulky guy. Because he was a big bulky guy. He was a guy who said ‘youse.’ ”

  “Maybe someone introduced them,” said Rowanne.

  “Maybe,” said Debbie. “But I remember thinking that it just didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound like a good match. But I went there one day—I think it was a Saturday morning and I had walked up to the library, and something came over me and I just thought I would knock on the door and say ‘hi.’

  “They were frying doughnuts and they invited me in. The husband’s name was Art Szebo, and he was very jolly and friendly. And Miss Spransy, or now she was Mrs. Szebo, I guess, was very jolly, too. She seemed softer and rounder and bouncier. They were having the best time. I had fun, too. We all sat there sifting cinnamon sugar onto doughnuts as they came out of the deep fryer, and eating them. We ate this amazing amount of doughnuts.

  “The house seemed different than before. There seemed to be less afghans and doilies, and there were man things around. Like work boots by the door and a thermos on the counter and a big plaid jacket. Also it was morning, so there was sunlight pouring in. But there was also a kind of life that wasn’t there before.

  “They had only been married six months when Mr. Szebo had a heart attack and dropped dead. Right at the bowling alley. When I heard about it, I felt terrible. I thought her life now would be so lonely and heartbroken and cold.

  “But I saw her again, and she seemed still happy. Still soft and rounded and relaxed like she had been in the kitchen on the day we had doughnuts. And I think it’s because she had been loved. Even though it wasn’t for very long, maybe it was enough. Mr. Szebo hadn’t left her or stopped loving her, there had been, like, a mechanical-technical failure. Something no one could help.

  “This probably sounds stupid, I know I’m still young and there’s a lot of time for things to happen, but sometimes I think there is something about me that’s wrong, that I’m not the kind of person anyone can fall in love with, and that I’ll just always be alone.

  “But I think if I knew someone was going to fall in love with me when I’m fifty-three or something, I think I could wait. Maybe. If I knew it would at least happen.”

  Rowanne made a hmm sound in the back of her throat, without opening her mouth.

  “I think everyone feels that way sometimes,” she said. “It’s not stupid.”

  For a minute or two they were quiet, then Rowanne said, “I have a story about love, too.”

  She paused, squinting a little as the story organized itself in her mind.

  “There’s a girl where I work,” she said. “But first, I have to tell you about my job.

  “It’s just for the summer. Thank God, or I would shoot myself. Fifteen of us show up every morning at seven-thirty and we sit at rows of desks. Each of us has a stack of cards, and we sit there all day, eight hours, and type what’s on the cards into the computers. You can say a few words to the person next to you, but there’s a supervisor, Vicky, and she makes sure everyone keeps typing.

  “There are no windows. You can’t see out. It’s like sensory deprivation, eight hours of typed cards, plywood walls, buzzing fluorescent lights, and wrinkled black carpet. And the radio. Every time a song comes on that I like, and I can feel my spirits lifting, Vicky switches it to something horrible and turns up the volume. Then I can hear everyone singing along while they type. They all like the same horrible music.

  “Sometimes I go into the bathroom and just sit there in the cubicle, daydreaming that someone will drive up in a little red sports car and rescue me. When I leave, at four-thirty in the afternoon, I go out the door and the hot smelly air and the dirty sidewalk feel like beauty, and freedom. I want to kiss the pavement.”

  “Why do you keep working there?” asked Debbie. Rowanne seemed to her to be a person who would never let herself be stuck where she didn’t want to be.

  “I thought it would be better than waitressing,” said Rowanne. “Now I’m not so sure. But I’m only there until the end of August. For most of them, this is it, this is life, it’s what you do after high school. And they all pretty much think it’s okay. Not great or anything, but okay. Where if I thought this was it, I’d melt into a blithering idiot.

  “We all bring our lunches and pull chairs up around a table in the front of the room and eat. You can go out, but there’s only half an hour and you would have to spend money. Sometimes I do it anyway. But usually I sit there and eat my sandwich and listen to everyone talk about their boyfriends.

  “They talk about their boyfriends all the time, and they talk about them as if they’ve been married for twenty years. I’m sort of a freak there because I don’t have a boyfriend and I’m going to college. I think they feel sorry for me for both reasons. And because I have short fingernails.

  “I used to try to join in the conversation, but my perspective is just too weird for them. The only topics where I’ve found I can speak pretty freely without blowing anyone’s mind are the weather and food. I can say, ‘I could just live on Fritos and Oreos,’ and they’re all with me. Because they’re basically nice people, they want to include me. They just can’t imagine why anyone would read a book of their own free will.

  “So mostly I eat and listen to them talk.

  “There’s a girl there named Becky. At the beginning of the summer, she always talked about her boyfriend, Rick. My first reaction was, Wow, even Becky has a boyfriend, what’s wrong with me? Because she’s—you might call her a loser. I know that sounds mean, but, it’s hard to put your finger on; she doesn’t have a lot going for her. The lights are on, but nobody’s home.

  “So Becky would always say something about Rick and everyone would smile and nod and say, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ or if she was mad at Rick they would say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t put up with that; tell him where he can go,’ stuff like that. There was something odd about it, but I didn’t think too much about it. The feeling I got was that no one really liked Rick, but they figured he was the best she could do.

  “Then she told us all that she and Rick were getting married. She was quitting; Rick didn’t want her to work. She gave two weeks notice; her last day would be a Friday. We had a little party for her that day after work. There was a cake, and we all chipped in to buy her some flimsy, frilly nightgown set. She was so happy, so excited. Then she was gone.

  “But a couple of days ago, she was back at work. I figured Rick decided they needed two incomes after all. At lunch, I asked her how the wedding went. I’m thinking, Oh goodie, finally I get to say something besides ‘I like food.’ She seemed to … shrink, or melt a little bit and immediately everyone was talking about something else. I thought, uh-oh, something must have gone wrong; they must have had a fight or something. They had fights all the time.

  “So a little later I went up to Vicky’s desk to trade in my stack of cards for another one and I asked her, really quietly, ‘Did Becky and Rick have a fight; did they not get married?’

  “She looked at me as if I were a moron, a nice moron, and said, ‘There isn’t any Rick. She made it all up. She makes them all up.’

  “It blew me away. They all knew, and they had a party for her; a cake, presents. And when she came back, because she had to, she needed the money, no one said a word.

  “Now already she has another boyfriend. Now she talks about Tony all the time. And they all sit there and say, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ or whatever.”
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  She hesitated.

  “I think it’s sad and pathetic that Becky feels like it’s so important to have a boyfriend that she makes one up. I can see how she would feel that, I mean, I’m just in this place for a few months and I fall into it, I get lost in it a little bit. And it’s those women, those girls (they’re really some kind of a cross between girls and women) who do it to her, though not on purpose. I mean, I think it’s all they know about.

  “But, at the same time, I think there’s something noble, something about love in how they go along with her. They give her dignity of some kind.

  “Does that make any sense?” she asked. “Do you know what I mean?”

  CHAPTER 38

  Lightning Bugs

  Other people on the roof were having conversations, too. It was the lightning bugs flickering all over the backyards that eventually drew them all back down the ladder. Someone went inside for a mason jar, someone put a little grass in it, someone went into a garage to tap air holes into the cap, and they moved around through the darkness in slow motion: watching, advancing, waiting, grabbing.

  Debbie was holding the jar. She lifted the cap as the capturers delivered their prey. Between deliveries she watched the bugs crawl and flutter around inside the jar, searching for the exit. It seemed cruel to keep them in there when it was so obvious that they wanted to get out. But she told herself that once they were free, their small, basic brains would probably have no memory of being imprisoned. Of their time in The Jar. She hoped this was true. In the meantime she might as well look closely at their red and black wings, lit up by their fellow lightning bugs, and watch their glow parts go on and off.

  “What makes them light up?” she asked Lenny as he brought another victim (temporary, small brain) to the jar. She had the feeling she had probably asked him before, but she forgot the answer.

  “It’s a chemical reaction,” he said. “In their abdomens.”

  “Why do they do it?” she asked.

  “It’s how the males find the females,” said Lenny. “There are different kinds in different parts of the world. There’s one in South America that has red and green lights on the same bug. It’s called a railway beetle because it looks like a train signal.” Encyclopedia information. He still remembered a lot of it.

  They were both looking into the jar. Then Lenny looked at Debbie’s face, intent and summery in the wobbly light, and he thought of a question he could ask her.

  “Wanna go to the movies?” he asked.

  No one had ever asked Debbie this question before. She had imagined, often, being asked this question, but not by Lenny. He was the wrong person. Wasn’t he? She had never felt that way about him.

  Had she?

  His question caught her off guard, and she didn’t know what to do with it. The part of her that was open to the universe was facing in another direction just then. She felt disoriented and uncomfortable and there was Lenny, waiting for her to say something back.

  “I think it’s better if we’re just friends,” she said.

  To her relief Patty arrived with a lightning bug. As she flicked it into the jar, Lenny said to her, “Do you wanna go to a movie?”

  “Okay,” she said. “What movie?”

  Debbie wasn’t sure what had just happened. She didn’t know if she had gotten out of an awkward situation or invented one. Or missed an opportunity. She felt an impulse to say, “Can I go, too?” Instead she handed Patty the jar and said, “Can you hold this for a while? I’m going to go catch some.”

  But when she had walked away into the darkness, she just stood there.

  Hector was lying on his back in the grass, looking up at the stars and playing his guitar. The sarong was bunched under his head for a pillow, and he was relying on the sound of his guitar and, near his head, a citronella candle he had borrowed from a local picnic table to keep from being stepped on.

  He was thinking that maybe love was like starting a fire with two sticks. You’ve always heard that it’s possible, but how likely is it?

  Debbie came over and sat, cross-legged, on the grass nearby. She crossed her arms, too, at the wrist, her hands resting side by side on her ankle. She was thinking that happiness wasn’t necessarily, as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz says, in your own backyard. But it might be nearby, in someone else’s backyard. She was thinking that the grass really could be greener on the other side of the fence. It depended on who was standing in the grass. Maybe you had to go take a look. Maybe she was the kind of person who would have to go Somewhere Else, and she wondered how far away Somewhere Else would have to be.

  Her eyes were open, but it was dark. Except for lightning bugs and stars and Hector’s candle. She listened to the guitar, which sounded perfect in the midsummer night air. Hector was doing pretty well for not being able to see and lying on his back. He was making up a song that didn’t have anything to do with his life so far. That’s what he liked about it. He didn’t know where it had come from or what kind of a song it was. He was just messing around.

  As usual, it wasn’t a complete song. It was just the refrain, and it had a rhythm. It didn’t quite have verses, or a melody, though it was trying to. To compensate for that, Hector sang it in a soft, twangy drone that was kind of a walk-through, a talk-through, as if, if he were really serious about singing it, there would be a melody there.

  It’s a long, long road

  I’m a-goin', goin’ home

  I am goin’ by myself

  I am goin’ on my own

  I can’t say I’ll never leave there

  I can’t say I’ll never roam

  ‘Cause my heart don’t grow in soil

  not the deepest darkest loam

  Just that berm on

  the side of

  the road …

  After listening for a few minutes, Debbie hummed along, then sang it with him as she picked up the words. She sang a harmony, which was interesting seeing as how there wasn’t even a melody yet. She listened as Hector fooled around with the chords, looking for a verse, then she said, “Wait, I have one.” Hector listened while she sang:

  Going somewhere, having gone

  I see I still must travel on

  I come and go, I go and come

  And will for all my journey on

  that long, long road

  and I’m goin’, goin’ home (etc.)

  This was the refrain again and Hector came back in. The melody was clearer now. Their voices rose and fell, separated and came back together, like two birds flying just for fun. That’s what they were doing, more or less.

  At some point Hector had shifted up to a sitting position, and now he remembered the necklace. He stopped playing, abruptly, and fished around in his pocket.

  “I almost forgot,” he said. “I have a gift for you.”

  “A gift?” said Debbie. “What for?”

  He drew the necklace out and held it suspended in the light of the citronella candle. Debbie let out a noise of surprise.

  “I had it made especially for you,” said Hector. “I had cars drive over it.”

  “That’s my necklace,” said Debbie. “Where did you find it?”

  She took the necklace and looked at the battered letters of her name. Ouch. The tiny red gem that had dotted the I was gone. The catch was completely busted.

  “I’m glad it’s not a voodoo necklace, or I would be in really bad shape,” she said.

  “I think you should wear it,” said Hector. “It’s like one of those dogs that travels a thousand miles to get back to its owner.”

  “I can’t,” said Debbie. “The little thing is broken.”

  “I’ll tie it in a knot,” said Hector. “Lean over.”

  Debbie wondered briefly how she would get it off later, but she leaned over and let Hector tie a knot in the gold chain. As she leaned over, she pulled her hair away from her neck and let it hang down in a waterfall, a temporary cave, around her face. She could feel Hector’s fingers fumbling with the flimsy chain at
the back of her neck.

  Hector, suddenly aware of Debbie’s hair and her neck in this unaccustomed arrangement and closeness, became clumsy. It took him forever to tie the knot. Finally he did it, and she raised her head and her hair went back down in the usual way, but floofed up and disheveled from having been upside down.

  Her loose hair, her summeriness, the existence of the back of her neck, and something she was in the process of learning made her look different than she had a few months ago. She sensed that she herself had something to do with the good and different and important thing that had happened to her, but she didn’t know how she had done it, or how to do it again. How much of it was luck. Thinking about this had changed the expression in her eyes.

  As for Hector, he had spent a lot of time walking lately. He had walked out of his roly-poly childhood, out of his cocoon. And he had spent a lot of time playing his guitar. It was a leaner, more thoughtful Hector who sat there in the cooling grass. He looked different, too.

  There they were, both of them waking up on a midsummer night. There was even good lighting: the citronella candle.

  Something should have happened. Maybe their eyes should have met, and they should have seen each other, really seen each other. After singing together like flying birds and tying on necklaces and all that.

  Hector did look at Debbie, and he saw her, really saw her for a moment. Debbie looked at Hector and she saw him, really saw him, for a moment. If it had been the same moment, something might have happened. But their moments were separated by about a second. Maybe only half a second. Their paths crossed, but they missed each other.