After the Moment (5 page)

Baghdad had fallen, quickly it seemed, in spite of everyone's predicting there would be poison gas or a battle on each street. But still the war went on, spreading across Iraq in different ways, all of them united in confusion. There were the Kurds in the north, and the British forces taking charge in Basra, and then there was the looting.

What Leigh was mostly finding out was that for every fact he thought he had, three more sprang up to contradict. At school, for students interested in following current events, one of the history teachers had posted the URLs for British newspapers and different blogs. Leigh was glad he had bookmarked each of them when three days later the list was taken down. Astra said that a parent on the PTA was a producer for one of the cable news shows and had complained that the list was biased.

No matter how you got your news, it was pretty clear that most people did not feel the way Lillian and Astra's parents did about the war. Most people were for it. Not in the world—the British Web pages told you that the world thought Americans were deranged cowboys—but at home.

Leigh hated the idea of disagreeing with most of the people who lived in his own country, and so he read and listened. And kept his mouth shut. And ran. And did homework. And iced his foot.

~~~

On the night the president flew his plane onto a ship to announce that the war was over, Lillian's boyfriend, Pete, and his sister, Kathleen, came over for dinner and to watch the event on television. Lillian and Pete Tahoe had been dating since Leigh was fourteen. Pete was okay. He'd never made Lillian cry, and he called every night, but in a nice way, not a stalker-checking-up-on-her way.

Kathleen Tahoe was nice, and Leigh liked that she was still close to her brother. He hoped he and Millie would be like that when they were older. Pete shook Leigh's hand, hugged Lillian, kissed her on the cheek, and said something about Bush, the war, and the announcement.

"Leigh," Kathleen said, kissing Lillian hello. "How's it going?"

"It moves along," he said.

They ate dinner in the small kitchen while Kathleen, who worked at a private bank, told a long, involved story about insurance fraud. Leigh, picking snow peas out of his Szechuan beef, listened without paying any attention.

When they turned on the TV, Kathleen said she had an early-morning meeting, otherwise she'd take a hit of scotch every time the president used the words
terrorist
or
9/11.

"I'm going to drink wine the whole way through," Lillian said, refilling her own and Pete's glass. "No matter what."

"It's so depressing," Pete said. "The guy's getting flown onto that aircraft carrier, and the whole world thinks he's a pilot."

Kathleen asked Leigh to get her some water, and he got himself some too, and then listened to the president as intently as possible. In spite of all his reading and trying to figure out what had happened where and when, the speech was as hard to follow as Kathleen's story about work had been.

He wasn't helped by Lillian and Kathleen's furious comments throughout about how criminal it was to make it sound like Iraq and Al Qaeda were the same thing. What Leigh knew most clearly about each was that, in Arabic,
Al Qaeda
meant "the base," and Iraq had once been Mesopotamia, or, as it was sometimes called, "the cradle of civilization." Obviously, they were not the same. And if
he
knew that, so did the president.

"The real war starts now" was all Pete said, and that, more than anything else, was something Leigh could both understand and believe.

~~~

Millie's letter to Lillian arrived the next day. When Leigh got home—late, as he'd spent the afternoon at a swim meet, watching Astra destroy her competition—Lillian handed it to him, saying, "This is really for you."

It was two pages long. Millie thanked Lillian for coming to Seth's service. She said she wanted to ask Leigh a huge favor, but first wanted Lillian's permission. Or, rather, she wanted it to be very clear that this was all her idea. Neither her mother nor Clayton knew anything about it. Could Leigh possibly come and live with his father next year?

Millie knew no one could replace her father, but it would be such a comfort to have her brother around. It would be nice if the thing she looked forward to—Leigh's visits—became something she was used to because he was there all the time. Millie meant no harm. It was fine if the answer was no. She understood about custody. But she'd be so grateful if Lillian gave her permission.

It was signed,
With respect and affection from a fan, Millie Davis.

Leigh looked at his mother.

"Why do you suppose she thinks I will say no?" Lillian asked.

He tried shrugging. Perhaps she would just accept that this was Millie's way of doing things.

"Imagine my surprise when I phoned your father to scream at him for making Millie write this," Lillian said. "For making a sad twelve-year-old girl feel like she'll unleash a custody war because she loves her brother."

"She said it was all her idea," Leigh said. "Dad didn't make her write it."

Lillian was silent, but in her quiet he could hear all the dreaded
dis-
words:
disappointment, disbelief,
and
disapproval.
Leigh remembered how in the months after the divorce, he would sometimes find his mother staring into space, or folding a shirt over and over again, or, worse, weeping into a dishtowel. When he finally got up the nerve to ask her if she missed Clayton, she laughed, saying, "No, not really. It's just ... all I've ever wanted was to do a good job raising you. But doing it alone means it's less likely I will."

"You do a good job," he had said, if uncertainly.

It hadn't occurred to Leigh that being his mother was work. He'd thought her work was sitting in the glow created by a computer screen.

"Well, you're amazing now," Lillian had answered. "Let's hope it holds."

At ten, Leigh was young enough to enjoy that his mother thought he was amazing, and old enough to hear her concerns about being responsible for his future. As he got older, Leigh cared less about her opinion of him, but the desire not to give Lillian cause to think she'd done a bad job remained quite strong.

These days, his mother worried that he didn't think enough about what he wanted, but in a way it was simple. Not to disappoint the people who loved him. To Leigh, that seemed like an obvious enough desire. And a normal one.

"Perhaps your father didn't 'make' Millie write this letter," Lillian said. "But both she and Clayton are under the impression that I have already turned down such a request."

"So you know," Leigh said, now understanding how he had upset his mother.

"You lied," Lillian said. "To him and, in a way, to me."

"It seemed like a good idea," Leigh said, and it had.

The summer before he started high school, Janet had told Leigh that Clayton was feeling that he and Leigh needed to work on their bond.

"He wants to be a good father," Janet said. "He really loves you."

She said they wanted Leigh to think about coming to live in Calvert Park for a while. Maybe for just a year, or maybe for all of high school, if he made friends and enjoyed his teachers.

Right away, two things had struck Leigh. That it was Janet, not Clayton talking to him meant that his father was incapable of forming a bond. Also, at fourteen, Leigh knew enough to guess that if he stopped living with Lillian, he'd run the risk of winding up like his father.

Whether Clayton was
autistic
or
shut down,
it wasn't something Leigh wanted to be.

"I was afraid you might say yes," he told his mother now.

It was a poor and late explanation, he knew, for why he had told both Janet and Clayton that while he'd be willing to move, Lillian had said no. And for why he had never mentioned it to his mother.

"I'd never agree to something you didn't want," she said. "I'd have lied for you."

"You might have thought it was only fair," Leigh said.

"I might have," Lillian said. "But I still wouldn't have agreed to it unless you wanted to go."

Leigh felt the paper he was holding. Millie's letter. In turning down Janet's invitation to go and live with them, he'd been so focused on not living with Clayton that he'd never given Millie a thought. Which was odd, because he knew that if Millie had asked instead of Janet, he might have gone. Seth needn't have died for him to live, at Millie's request, in Calvert Park.

"How about now?" he asked. The idea of Millie having only Clayton around as she adjusted to her new post-Seth world was unbearable. "Would you agree to it now?"

"I would, although, I'd like to be sure that you want to move," Lillian said. "That you don't go to your father's simply because Millie has asked you."

This again. Would his mother be happy if he only did what he wanted, when he wanted? It wasn't as if you could always tell the difference, anyway. Millie wanted him near her. Would he want to live with his father without his sister wishing it? Of course not. But Millie's wishing it didn't mean Leigh couldn't want to do it.

"It's both," he said. "She's asked me to live at Dad's, and so I want to."

"Okay," Lillian said, "but I'll need to talk to your school about how transferring in your last year will look to colleges."

"
This
is the year that counts," Leigh said, in case she'd forgotten why he'd been killing himself to do his homework.

Why he was suddenly able to graph around a Z-axis, solve a word problem, and write an essay that wasn't riddled with contradictions. He was studying really hard, and while, yes, some of this was interesting (being able to answer questions about Wordsworth's poem "Tintern Abbey" brought a real sense of satisfaction), the work he was doing was to produce, on transcripts and applications, a picture of himself that pleased at least one college.

Even if Leigh had no faith that college would help him decipher the map to his future, he knew that
not
going to college would do more than disappoint his parents. Not going to college would probably guarantee that he'd lose sight of the road he was supposedly on, as well as any road he might ever want to be on. For this reason alone, Leigh was willing to jump through each of the hoops his junior year demanded.

"All the years count," Lillian said.

"I'd like to go," Leigh said. "I mean, people move all the time. Colleges must know that."

It was funny how the whole eleventh grade referred to "colleges" as if they were a group of people. Whenever Leigh was told to worry about what colleges wanted, he envisioned a group of men in a smoky room, playing a card game for which he and every other applicant in the country were the chips.

"Yes," Lillian said. "Of course colleges know that."

He thought he should say something about how he'd miss her, how he'd never not want to live here. He wanted her to know how much he'd come to love the sight of her staring at her laptop, murmuring, "How is this interesting?"

Was there a way to explain this without sounding ridiculous?

"It's admirable, you know," Lillian said, interrupting his silent efforts to speak. "I'm so impressed with your ability ... with how you love her."

Surely it was a simple matter to say that yes, he loved Millie, but that he also loved her. If he couldn't manage it, then were the words
Thank you
so impossible?

Apparently yes, since all he could get out was "Everyone loves Millie."

The guidance counselor at Leigh's school thought that moving to Maryland would actually help with colleges, making Leigh imagine the men in the smoky room trading his New York City chip for a higher-value Maryland chip. Millie burst into happy giggles when Leigh told her he would come, yes, of course he would.

"Thank you," she said. And, "Oh, gosh."

Clayton sent him a note, writing that his willingness to accommodate them was much appreciated. Janet called to say that she would be having a carpenter build extra shelves in the guest room and did Leigh have a favorite color, as she'd be glad to have the room painted.

"I'll paint it," Leigh said, so grateful he wouldn't spend the year looking at green walls that he'd happily save Janet the money and aggravation a painting crew would involve. "Millie can help me."

At school, his friends and soccer coach struck the perfect balance between being sorry to see him go and wishing him well.

Astra nodded her head when she heard. She said
Oh
and
Well,
but with a space in between so that it didn't sound like a casual
Oh, well, bummer,
but more like a quiet acceptance.

"Do you want to break up?" she asked later that day when they were walking home from school. "I mean, I can't be running to Maryland on the weekends. I'll be swamped with applications and stuff."

Before Astra would be in Vermont with her father, she was going with her mother and stepfather on a tour of the eleven colleges she wanted to see. She would apply, she already knew, only to seven. Leigh, who had no idea where he would apply, at once loved, envied, and feared Astra's organized approach to decisions about things that were murky, but important.

When she asked,
Do you want to break up?
he felt sure she had an answer in hand and was waiting to test him on the basis of his answer.

"I don't know of anyone who'd willingly break up with you. I mean, only an idiot would let that happen," he said, deciding to blunder into it. "So, unless you want to break up, why don't we just see how it goes?"

She stopped dead on the sidewalk, dropping her canvas messenger bag at her feet. She took his hand in hers, pulled him toward her, and then slid her arms around his neck.

"Oh," she said again, her breath cool against his cheek. "Well."

With the small part of his brain not kissing her back, Leigh thought,
Finally, a right answer.

~~~

Pete Tahoe invited Leigh and Lillian up to his house in Maine for the Memorial Day weekend. Lillian had, of course, been many times before, but this was the first time for Leigh. He had to get permission from Clayton to skip a visit and promised to go down to Calvert Park the following weekend, which was the last one in May.