Some of Tim's Stories (3 page)

It wasn't the first thing he thought of when he remembered her, but it had to be the second.

How much she loved movies.

Not the new ones, the ones you saw on the big screen, at least not often. Most of the new ones she scorned.

“That is so clichéd,” she'd say, yawning while the rest gasped in horror, laughing when others wept.

These were the only times he ever heard her say anything harsh. She was unnaturally kind.

But she loved the old ones.

They went in together to buy a VCR, rented movies instead. Neither one of them had any money, it was cheaper.

Stretched out on the couch, Sunday afternoons in particular, they'd watch for hours.

She knew all of the actors.

“You'll never believe who was up for this part,” she'd tell him. “It would have ruined the whole thing. Casting is really important.”

He'd nod, not paying attention, thinking it odd how one girl's head on your shoulder, one girl's arm on your chest, one girl's leg wrapped around your leg was just a better fit than any other's.

She loved black and white.

“Look at the shadows,” she said. “Color would spoil it.”

He liked colors, so instead he'd look at the top of her head, the twenty shades of gold and brown it took to come up with her hair, the natural pink of her nails … notice that when she wore one of his T-shirts it was always the green one…

“They did such a good job on lighting.”

And he'd see how the sunlight lit the hairs on her arms into silver; he'd just have to stroke them … How rain brought out the depth of her eyes.

“Listen to this,” she said. “This line is classic.”

“So what's the difference,” he'd ask, not really caring, “between classic and cliché?”

“Cliché is just the same old way to say something. Anyone can mouth a cliché. Classic is taking something everyone feels and putting it so true, so different, so right, it's the best way anyone could say it.”

So he learned some classic lines:

“Here's looking at you, kid.”

“We'll always have Paris.”

“You know how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together and blow.”

She knew how movies were made, which ones were adapted, which were written from scratch. She talked about conferences, backstory, and improv. The most important part of a movie, she told him, was story. Most of the new ones didn't have story.

He would think of their story, how they had met.

He worked on a street crew; they were repairing a neighborhood road. It was a hundred degrees, and the men were surly and mean.

And she came out of a house with a pitcher of lemonade and real glasses—like she wasn't afraid of their germs.

And she passed it around, with thanks for their work. It was the first time that happened.

You could tell she wasn't afraid they'd say rough things, get nasty. And nobody did.

When she looked at them, she looked under grime and saw people. She had those kind of eyes.

And when he went back later, clean, nervous, cursing himself for a fool, and knocked on the door—she was the babysitter, he found out—she could still see him. She didn't mistake shy for sullen or take lack of words for no thought. It was the first time anyone had seen him that clearly.

Women usually saw what he could be; this was the first who loved what he was.

It surprised him, much later, to find out how much he knew about movies. Who Alan Smithee was and what POV stood for, the difference between a medium and a long shot. It made him think about other things he'd learned from her: how to start trusting again, what a useless thing a grudge was, how to see people when you look at them. To look for the backstory.

No, she didn't mind the sad endings, though they did make her sad. It happened, she said. That was why good movies were real life…

So that was always the second thing he thought of when he remembered her. How much she loved movies…

But the first … the first was always:

I miss you.

I need you.

I love you.

I should have never let you go.

It was cliché, he knew. But he meant it classic.

“He looks good,” Aunt Jelly said. “Better than you'd think. Too thin, maybe, but he says the food's not great.”

Mike hadn't supposed the food was great.

“He wants to know if you're getting his letters. He says he hasn't heard from you.”

“Yeah I get them. But you know I'm not much on letter-writing.”

What was he supposed to say? “Dear Terry, how are you? Having fun in that place? I am walking around free as a bird while you have years to go”?

But he'd get mail from Terry anyway. Every week or so.

“Dear Mike,” he wrote once, “too bad you're not in here with me. We young guys are real popular.”

Mike never showed his letters to Aunt Jelly. They were different from the ones she got.

“There's good things about this place, cuz,” he wrote once. “After a couple of weeks you can smuggle watermelons”.

Mike had crumpled that one up and slammed it into the trash. And the last one. Full of sick jokes and fake cheerfulness. Then one line, after his signature, so different and shaky you wouldn't know it for Terry's handwriting: “I am not going to make it, Mike.”

And he'd spilled something on it. Or cried.

Oh God.

“I told him you'd come up to visit with me sometime.” Aunt Jelly made that drive every Saturday. Four hours there, four back.

“I work late Fridays and Saturdays,” Mike said. “Sometimes I don't get home till four or five.”

He didn't want to know what that place looked like. He didn't want to set foot inside the doors. He'd never be able to forget the smell, he knew it.

Aunt Jelly put the bacon-and-tomato sandwich in front of him. She had lathered on the mayonnaise the way he liked it. But no onions. Terry was the one who liked onions.

Then she got the ice teas and sat across from him.

Mike looked away. Her eyes were the same color as Terry's. Kind of brown and green mixed up.

Through the back screen door he could see the tomato plants straining at the stakes, full of green and light tan fruit.

He and Terry always bitched about that when they were kids, having to dig up that garden every spring. Funny, they didn't mind it so much when they were older. Probably because they could think about the sandwiches they'd be getting, instead of how they could be playing ball.

Last spring, and this spring, Mike had done it alone, and set the plants out, too.

“Well, maybe sometime when you get a night off.”

“Sure,” Mike said. He took a bite. Terry loved these things, with the tomatoes right off the vine. He'd eat a half-dozen easy, if Aunt Jelly would keep frying bacon.

The bite stuck in his throat, and he washed it down with tea. He could get through one sandwich this way, but she had left the bacon out, expecting him to eat three at least.

You two eat like horses for such skinny boys. They had heard that all their lives. Then they hit twenty and filled out, like someone had colored in an outline, and people said no wonder you two ate so much.

Mike wondered what Terry was eating this afternoon. Maybe they got something special on Sundays.

He put his sandwich down.

“I saw Amber at Dillard's. She said to say hi.”

“I don't need to hear from her,” Mike said. “We've been broke up a year.”

“Well,” said Aunt Jelly.

That last night he spent with Amber. Starting off sweet and slow like always, getting hotter and fiercer. He was settling on top of her, and then he had to go and think, “Terry can't do this.”

And then think what Terry might be doing instead. He lost it fast, like he'd heard you could, but it was the first time for him.

The feel of someone else's skin on his had made him sick; he had the flu, he told her, after he ran to the john to puke. And sure enough, he shook all night with chills.

He got drunk, picked a fight with Amber the next day, scared if he tried to get close to her again it would happen just the same. And the day after that. It surprised him how long she stayed with him. But she had finally left.

“So any new girl, then?”

“Maybe.” Mike didn't mean to sound so rude. He had always loved talking to Aunt Jelly. Sometimes even more than to his own mom. Especially after the step-bastard. He had spent a lot of time at this house after the step-bastard.

But it was hard to talk to her now. The room felt so empty without Terry.

Mike shook himself like a wet dog. He had to quit thinking like this. He'd go nuts if this kept up.

Last Thursday, at the ballpark, high up in the stands, he got to thinking how when they were little, they'd come up here to drop peanuts on people. Then in high school, to cruise for girls. Then, the last few years, to watch the game.

When the crowd got up and left, Mike did too. He had no idea of the score.

“So what are you doing the rest of the day?” Aunt Jelly asked. She had seen it was no use making another sandwich.

“Change the oil in the truck,” Mike said. “Next week I'll do yours.”

He looked after her car now, but even before he'd done most of it. Terry'd hang around and talk while Mike did most of the work. Mike didn't mind; Terry was a good talker.

Holy shit. Was he never going to quit thinking this way? It had been over a year now.

He couldn't lay in the grass and look up at the sky and not think, “Terry can't do this.”

He couldn't go fishing, play catch with the dog, stop in the grocery store, take a nice long hot shower without thinking, “Terry can't do this.”

He got up and carried his plate and glass to the sink.

In the distance, a police siren wailed. The glass broke in the sink.

Aunt Jelly said, “Never mind, honey.”

But Mike didn't hear.

He was back in that deserted parking lot. It was real late at night. He and Terry sat in the dark car, smoking.

“They're late,” Mike said.

They were messing with stuff they shouldn't have been messing with. Dealing with people they shouldn't have been dealing with.

They knew better. They were smarter than that. All the stuff he heard later, it was true. It didn't change a thing…

“Aw, they'll show up. They just better have all the money this time,” Terry said.

They weren't too nervous. After four or five times you got used to thinking nothing would go wrong.

Through the alley, across the street, you could see the lights of an all-night Jiffy Stop.

“I'm going to get a slurpie,” Mike said. “I'll be right back.”

“Well hurry. Get me a beer while you're at it.” Terry said. “Slurpie? Geez, Mike, how can you drink that shit?”

Mike got impatient with the clerk behind the counter. It wasn't like he had all night. A beer and a grape slurpie, how long could that take to ring up?

The clerk was watching TV. Columbo was about to nail the murderer. And then the screen was filled with a radar map and some weather guy blithering about tornadoes.

“Goddammit!” The clerk pounded on the counter. Then he looked at Mike. Then past Mike's shoulder. “What's going on over there?”

There were flashing lights behind the building across the street. You could see them down the alleyway. Now there were more flashing lights coming down the street. And then they turned on the sirens.

Mike and the clerk and the two other customers watched out the glass storefront. Someone said fight. Someone said mugging. The clerk said probably a drug bust; there was so much of that around here.

Mike drank his slurpie without saying anything. When the others left, he did too.

And when the police showed up to question him the next day, he said he'd been home all night. Watching TV.
Columbo
. But the goddamn weatherman had ruined the whole thing.

That fit with Terry's story, that he'd been alone. And even though Mike could have read
Columbo
's plot in the
TV Guide
, he wouldn't have known about the weather bulletin.

If he had been anywhere near the drug bust.

Mike couldn't bring himself to go to the trial, see Terry all scrubbed up and in that suit he'd bought only a couple of months before, for Grandma's funeral. To have Terry see him walking around free.

But he heard about the sentence. The fucking gun in the car added three more years. He had told Terry they didn't need a gun in the car. Stupidass bastard.

He stared out the kitchen window at the mimosa tree in full bloom. It was a lot bigger now than when they were kids. It smelled so strong.

“I love that smell,” Terry had said. “That is pure-dee summer.”

Aunt Jelly gently pushed him aside, picked the glass pieces out of the sink and put them in the trash. She wiped her hands on a towel.

She hugged him for a minute.

“It's such a comfort to me,” she said, “to know, at least,
you're
free.”