Mean Season (9 page)

“It's the highest-rated show on ABC,” Judy said. “And I understand that's the clearest of your five channels.”

 

That's how the first week ended and the second one began. Judy was right—after Joshua's Emmy-worthy performance with Marcy Thompson and her perfect hair, the press backed off. For the next couple weeks, there was often a news van nearby during the daylight hours, but rarely more than one, and after that, they left altogether. I didn't much care for the on-camera types, but the sound guys and van technicians all seemed decent, and a few of them let Beau Ray hold cameras, look at monitors and listen in their headphones. He even got one crew to drive him to his “Move Your Body, Move Your Mind” class on a particularly slow day. Nothing had held his attention that long since his accident.

Even Momma didn't seem to mind the press after that. “So long as they stay out of our garbage,” she said. (She'd become sort of obsessed with the vision of someone digging through our trash cans.) I wasn't sure if it was because of Beau Ray's enthusiasm or because things had continued with Bill Weintraub. She didn't say, and I was afraid to ask. Part of me thought that she was actually enjoying the attention her legal guardian status brought. Susan had called home more regularly since Joshua moved in—to check in with Momma, officially, though I figured she was hoping Joshua would answer the phone. Even Tommy called a few times after the
Hollywood Express
interview aired, though I could have done without his “way to go with the apples” commentary.

That Tuesday, when I dropped Joshua at his AA meeting, there were fifteen people in my old French classroom. That Thursday, maybe twenty-five. It was so crowded that Grant Pearson had to move the meeting to the small lecture hall, and the following week, to the gym. Such is the power of television, or at least, a well-placed interview on
Hollywood Express
.

 

Friday night marked the end of day twelve. I was up in my room reading when I heard a car in the driveway. It was getting late—I figured it was Momma back from her date, until I heard a girly shriek, and then a giggle.

I opened my window shade and looked down at the front lawn. A woman I didn't recognize stood on the grass. The motion-sensitive lights that Momma had set up lit her from above, so I couldn't tell how old she was, maybe twenty, maybe older. She had long brown hair, and looked kind of pretty, what I could see of her face. I noticed right away that she was stumbling around, squinting in the light, and that she was trying to undo the buttons on her blouse. She looked up at my window.

“Joshua Reed!” she called out. The car in the driveway flashed its lights and honked. “Joshua Reed!” she called again. “Come out and play! I got a present!”

“Hey, Joshua,” I called across the hall. “You've got a visitor.”

“I'm sleeping,” he said, even though I could see that his light was on.

So I told him that his visitor was taking off her shirt, and he jumped out of bed and came into my room. He looked out the window, down to the girl in the yard.

“Yoo-hoo!” she called up. “Hey there, is that you? Come out and play!” She looked like she might topple over.

Joshua shook his head and turned away from the window. “At least in L.A., the freaks are good-looking,” he said. He wandered back to his bedroom.

I didn't know what to do, but I knew that she couldn't be on the lawn when Momma did get home. I went downstairs and out the front door. The girl was still weaving on the grass, her shirt halfway off. I was glad she was wearing a bra. I could hear giggles from the car.

“Hey,” I called out to get her attention. I told her that Joshua would not be coming down.

“Then I'll go up,” she said, and lurched in the direction of the front door.

“You can't.”

“I can't?” She looked confused. When I saw her up close, I could tell that she wasn't so young. She looked older than I was.

“No. Besides,” I said. “I'll tell you a secret.”

The woman leaned in. She smelled strongly of alcohol.

“He's good-looking and all,” I told her, “but he's a real asshole.”

The woman teetered a bit, frowned, and nodded. “That's okay,” she said, slurring a little. “I don't mind.”

“No, really. A real asshole. He doesn't deserve it.”

“I don't mind,” she said again. “It's Joshua Reed.”

“Jesus,” I said. I yelled toward the car. “Take her home or I'm going to have to call the police. This whole area is posted no trespassing.”

I heard the car door open. By the time I was closing the front door, her friends were pulling her off the lawn. By the time I was back upstairs, the car was out of our driveway.

“Is she gone?” Joshua asked.

“Yep,” I said. “I told her that you were an asshole, but she wanted to sleep with you anyway.”

“Fame's amazing, isn't it?” he said.

The Guys

T
he next Sunday when I was back at the Winn-Dixie, no one followed me. Max was there, and he walked with me again, and told me that their distributor was checking to see if they could get California Red Ale. That's the exact sort of thing Max did that made him hard to forget about.

We filled up the cart—milk, dry cereal, apples, pasta, hamburger, eggs, bread, cheese, carrots. The usual stuff. Max walked beside me and passed along gossip he'd heard in the previous week about people we both knew. He said that Loreen (the skank that Howard Malkin once cheated on me with) had come in and bought a home pregnancy test. He said that Brennie Critchett had hauled out four cases of Budweiser.

“She's stronger than she looks,” Max said, sounding impressed.

“I thought what people bought was confidential,” I told him. “Isn't the Winn-Dixie associate manager like a priest
or something? You know, cone of silence? Manager-shopper privilege?”

“That's the manager you're thinking of,” Max said. “The associate manager can be a terrible gossip.” He grinned at me.

“Makes me nervous, you watching things so close,” I said. “I hope you're not going to start telling people how I bought sardines for some strange man.”

Max laughed. “Sometimes I watch close and sometimes I can miss everything, if you hadn't noticed. But I wouldn't rat you out, Leanne,” he said. I wanted to believe him. “Though you can bet that people are asking.”

“Asking?”

“Well, duh. That interview on television. It's all everyone's been talking about. Your movie star is the biggest thing in Pinecob since…for a long while.”

“He's not
my
movie star,” I said.

I'd either been in the house or at work all week, or with Sandy, so I guess I hadn't noticed. But I didn't like the sound of what Max said. I asked him what people were looking to know. And why they were asking
him.

“Everyone knows that Beau Ray and I go way back. So they ask. You know, what do I think is really going on.”

“And what do you tell them?” I looked hard at him. I didn't want him to turn it into a joke. I needed him not to. This was my family, after all. And me. And he didn't.

“I say I don't know. I tell them I don't know you well enough to hazard a guess about something like that, but that in my opinion, your family has gone through enough to have earned a little privacy.”

“You
know
me,” I told him.

“Not really,” Max said, like it was just another fact and not something he felt one way or another about.

I winced at that a little, on the inside, because it wasn't as if he hadn't had the opportunity, in such a small town. And there
I
was, able to recollect exactly how close I'd stood to
Max and when. Able to recall entire conversations we'd had—what he'd said, what I'd said, what I'd been wearing, how his expression had changed with the topic. And after certain run-ins, I'd spent hours wringing out every bit of potential meaning, and then again with Sandy. I used to map out conversations with Max in advance, just in case—the hints I would drop, cute stories I would tell that showed me in a good light, sounding funny, sounding witty, sounding charming. But apparently he'd missed all of it. Like he claimed he could.

“Think I'm done,” I said, rolling my cart up to one of the check-out aisles. Isn't there a point at which the mind should be able to surrender on behalf of the heart? Or check it in to an asylum, somewhere safe and locked, if the heart keeps refusing to see a landscape for what it is? Yet with some people in life, it seems you just can't loose yourself, even when you should. “Thanks for walking with me,” I said.

“A pleasure as usual, Ms. Gitlin,” Max said. He pulled a box of cereal bars from my cart and put it on the conveyor belt. “So, what have you got going tonight?” he asked.

The cashier looked up like she hoped he was asking her, but Max was looking right at me. Right at me. I could see the cashier give me a once-over before going back to ringing my groceries. I hoped she wouldn't overcharge me.

“Tonight? Nothing, I don't think. Why?” I was really working to sound casual.

“Lionel's renting
Die Hard
and
Die Harder
and we were all going to watch them over at his new house. You want to come?”

I considered it for about a second. Max Campbell was asking me out. Not on a date, but still. It was the flip side of oblivious.

“What time?” I asked, like it mattered, like I might have other options more pressing, like I wouldn't automatically go anywhere Max asked me to go.

“We were going to order pizza in about an hour and start after that. I'm about to get off work. You want me to come by and pick you up? Or better, I could go with you now, and come back for my car later.” He glanced at the big Winn-Dixie clock over the row of check-out lanes, then back to me.

“Well, if you're ready to go now. Whichever you want.” I figured the more time I could spend with him, the better, although I wouldn't have minded the opportunity to wash my face and look a little nicer. But I got the distinct impression that Max wanted out of the Winn-Dixie then and there. So I waited in the car as he clocked out, and we drove back to Prospect Street.

As soon as I'd parked the car, Max got out and started pulling grocery bags from the back seat. I watched him and thought back to when he was sixteen and Winn-Dixie's newest bag boy. Here he was, nearly twice his life later, still holding grocery bags. It figured he might be getting restless.

“So will I get to meet the mystery man?” Max asked, heading toward our front door. I felt a little ping in my stomach. Of course that was why he wanted to help with my groceries. He wanted to meet Joshua Reed. Why wouldn't he? He'd said it himself—this was the biggest thing going in Pinecob.

“You can be sure he's around,” I said.

Max followed me into the house.

“Beau Ray!” I called out. “Look who's here.” No one answered.

Max and I put our bags on the kitchen table, and I walked through the dining room and into the backyard. Beau Ray and Joshua were sitting in the lounge chairs, playing cards.

“No,” Joshua was saying. “Remember? You need to get three of one number, or else three in a row of one suit, like all diamonds or all hearts, but in a row, you know, like eight, nine, ten.”

Beau Ray nodded.

“Hey there,” I said. “Beau Ray, look who's here.”

Beau Ray looked up at Max. “Hey, Smax,” he said.

“Yo, Bobo,” Max said. That's how they had greeted each other since the seventh grade.

“Max, this is Joshua. Joshua, Max. Max is an old family friend.”

“Nice to meet you,” Max said.

“Likewise,” Joshua said, lifting his head. “Call me Josh.” He looked back and forth, from Max to me.

“Max, you know how to play Gin?” Beau Ray asked. “Josh is teaching me Gin.”

“That's a good game,” Max said.

“We'll deal you in the next hand,” Joshua said.

“Sure, cool,” Max said.

“So what time are we supposed to be at Lionel's?” I asked.

Max spun around and looked at me, and it seemed that he'd forgotten I was there until I spoke.

“If you still want to go,” I said.

“No, I do. I do,” he said.

“I need to get the rest of the groceries from the car,” I said, heading back into the house.

“I'll help,” Max said.

“I'll help,” Beau Ray said and stood up. The cards on his lap fell to the lawn. Ever since his accident, Beau Ray had liked putting the Sunday groceries away. In the economics course I'd taken at night school, my teacher called something like that a “positive externality.” A good thing, unexpected.

“I guess we're not playing then,” Joshua said. He stood, too.

“Bobo,” Max said. “Lionel's renting movies tonight. You want to come out and watch?”

Part of me dropped down a little. If Beau Ray came, I knew that Max and I wouldn't be alone, not in the car, not
ever. The other part of me knew that this was the same guy who had run into traffic after a dog—the generous side of him, and I'd always liked that side.

“I want to go!” Beau Ray said.

“Why don't you guys watch them here?” Joshua said. “It would be cool to get to know some more people in town, and have a little company. That is, if it wouldn't screw up your other plans.”

I stared at Joshua. He was so friendly to everyone but me.

“Here?” Max asked. “You sure you want to? It's just a bunch of guys we went to high school with. I mean, if you're cool with it, that's cool.”

“I should probably call Judy, to ask,” I said. “She didn't want—”

“Fuck that, Leanne,” Joshua said. “Sorry, but why can't I watch a few movies with some of the guys? What's the harm in that?”

I shrugged. Any hope of the night turning into a date with Max was already blown, so I didn't see how having the guys over to my living room would matter much. I'd dated Lionel for a time anyway, the year before, and it had been a while since I'd seen him.

“If you think Lionel wouldn't mind switching locations,” I said to Max. “I could order the pizza.”

 

Of course Lionel didn't mind. Not when he heard that he'd be watching the
Die Hard
series with Joshua Reed, who had actually met Bruce Willis. And the other guys—Paulie and Scooter—didn't mind either.

“Hey, Leanne,” they all said, as they walked in with their beers and dug into the pizza I'd had delivered. Joshua and Beau Ray and I drank lemonade.

“So, Leanne,” Lionel said, later, when we were in the kitchen at the same time. “How freaky is it you've got Joshua Reed living here? Crazy cool though.”

“Just for ninety days,” I reminded him. “Or seventy-six, after today.”

“So he's what, staying in Vince's old room?”

I nodded.

“And you're still in your old room?” Lionel asked.

“Nothing's changed,” I told him.

“I like that room,” he said.

Lionel was tall and big at the same time, like a bear, and because of that, I'd always felt sort of dainty in his company. Maybe it was being the youngest of five that set me up to be taller than most girls. Vince used to say it was because I had more room to stretch from the outset, and my body had grown used to it, way back in Momma's belly. My dad would always tell me that being a little above average was generally better than being a little below, but there were times—around my sister Susan and other petite types—when I felt more galumphing than girlish. Women are supposed to be strong, sure, but they're also supposed to be delicate, like filigree made of steel. One of the reasons I'd first been drawn to Lionel was how his very size let me feel nearer to delicate.

He took a step toward me and I smiled. Lionel and I had more drifted apart than broken up. He'd wanted someone who could stay out all night, playing pool and drinking beer, and I'd always had to be home for one thing or another. But there was nothing wrong with him, and even less when he was right there in front of me, looking at me like he was remembering a song he liked the sound of.

“It does the job,” I said. “It's a good room.”

“What is?” Max had wandered into the kitchen during my last sentence. He looked from me to Lionel.

“My bedroom,” I mumbled. “It's nothing. We were just talking. Have you guys started the second movie yet?”

Lionel was still looking at me with that look of his, and I suddenly wished he wouldn't.

“We just did. I was coming in to tell you,” Max said. “You done in here?”

“Sure,” I said, and Lionel and I followed him out of the kitchen.

 

In the living room, the guys were sprawled on our two couches. Joshua was in Dad's old recliner, and Beau Ray lay on a floor cushion. I sat on the floor in front of the long couch. Lionel sat behind me, and at some point in the middle of the second movie, he started twirling his fingers through my hair. It would have felt good had we been alone, but there were five other guys in the room, and since Lionel and I weren't a couple, it mostly felt like a possession thing.

By the time
Die Hard 2
was over, the beer and pizza were long gone and Joshua was calling all of them “Man” and “Dude,” the way guys do when they're familiar past first names. Lionel talked about coming over the following week with another movie rental. Scooter suggested that Joshua join their standing Tuesday night poker game, with Paulie pointing out that, of course they could relocate to our house.

“I'll have to see about that,” Joshua said. He glanced over at me, because both of us knew that Tuesdays were AA nights.

“Tuesdays aren't so good around here,” I said. “My mother…” I left it at that, and Scooter and Lionel nodded. Momma had a long-standing reputation for being strict about her house and what went on inside of it.

“That's cool,” Paulie said. “Another time.”

I walked Lionel to the door, and he kissed me on the lips. Lightly, but still on the lips.

“Good to see you, little lady,” he said. “A right pleasure.”

“Yeah, you, too,” I said. “Drive safe, all of you.”

“Thanks, Leanne. Say hey to Sandy for me,” Scooter said as he was leaving. “Max, don't you need a ride?” he asked.

“I'll be right there,” Max said. He stood in the doorway
like he didn't know where he wanted to go. He looked at Joshua and Beau Ray, who were still lounging in the living room, poking at each other. He looked at the idling cars in the driveway, and waved to Scooter. He looked at me.

“Thanks for letting us locusts descend on your house,” he said.

“It was Joshua's idea,” I reminded him.