The Secrets of Tree Taylor (22 page)

The Beach Boys were in the middle of “Surfin’ U.S.A.” Dad started bobbing to the beat.

“I love this song!” I could hear the music streaming from dozens of speakers.

“No dancing, Tree,” Eileen warned. She leaned out her window to haul in our backseat speaker. When she turned it on, it was scratchy. But it cleared up.

“You girls can watch from the roof if you want to,” Mom offered. “I threw blankets into the back. You can probably see the screen better from up there.”

Dad slipped his arm around Mom’s shoulder. “Yeah. The windshield up here’s liable to get pretty steamy.”

“Frank!” Mom shoved him a little.

“Gross!” Eileen moved the speaker to the luggage rack and
tossed up blankets. “Tree and I can get food before the movie starts.”

The speakers went silent. Lights faded across the parking lot.

“Previews!” I cried. “We can’t go now.”

“Tree,” Eileen pleaded. “They’re just previews.”

“Shh!” No way I’d miss the best part of the night.

Eileen gave up as the screen exploded with the words
The Great Escape
.

“I’ve heard about this one,” Dad said. “Bob claims it’s going to be a great movie. Steve McQueen. World War Two.”

I was relieved that my dad was still talking about Bob. I hoped that meant he was still talking
to
Bob, even after the Vietnam poem hit the paper.

I made myself quit thinking about anything except what was on the screen.

The previews were awesome. The only one that didn’t look worth seeing was
Cleopatra
, although I liked Elizabeth Taylor. I loved her as a kid in
National Velvet
. Sarah and I watched that movie every time it came on TV. At least, we
had
watched it. Now we’d be in different states, and Kansas probably didn’t even show
National Velvet
on TV.

I forced myself to put Sarah’s move to Kansas out of my mind too.

Eileen and I agreed we
had
to see the next James Bond movie. Only, seeing Bond on the screen made me think of
Dr. No
. Eileen elbowed me, like she knew what I was thinking. I elbowed her back and made myself stop thinking about Ray.

Suddenly, the screen filled with birds. Speakers all over the lot squawked with the cries of flying creatures that chased
school kids, pecking at their hair and arms. Big letters spread across the screen: Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds
.

“That was the best preview I’ve ever seen!” I announced as soon as it ended.

Dad agreed. “We’ll have to see that one for sure.”

“Not on your life!” Mom protested.

“Me neither,” Eileen said.

I stared at the screen, hoping for another preview. Instead, rinky-dink music started up, and cups danced across the screen.

Dad shoved money at Eileen. “Hot dogs, popcorn, Milk Duds, Coke. And whatever you girls want.”

Eileen scooted out my door so she didn’t wreck the speaker. “We should have gone earlier. Everybody will go now. We could miss the start of the movie.”

Now that I’d seen the previews, who cared about the show?

I was trotting between cars, looking out for speaker cords, when obnoxious cackles caught my attention. It might have been because they were the loudest or maybe because I recognized something in that laughter. Or someone.

Two cars over, I spotted Wayne Wilson’s green pickup. Around it, the ground was littered with hot dog wrappers, squished cups, and squashed cigarette packs. Smoke rose from the truck bed, where a dozen kids sat, some from Wayne’s class, some from mine. In the center of it all was Wanda. And next to her, Ray.

I nearly stumbled trying to get away.

“Tree!” Eileen shouted when I caught up to her. “I’ve been standing here shouting forever. Can’t you even drag yourself away from the dancing cups?” She turned and walked into the snack bar.

While we waited, she frowned over at me. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I just saw Ray.”

“Ray Miller?” She glanced around, like he might be in the room with us.

“And Wanda. And a bunch of kids from my class. They’re out there in Wayne’s pickup. I only saw them because they were laughing so loud.”

“Tree, I’m sorry. Did they see you?” She paid the snack bar person and put Dad’s change into her purse.

“I don’t know.” I took one of the food trays.

“Come again!” called the snack guy. I was pretty sure he was making a play for Eileen.

She ignored him and followed me outside. June bugs buzzed around the lights at the door. Crickets hopped on the cement. Eileen sighed. “I don’t know what to say, Tree.”

“I don’t get it. He could have asked me to come along. I don’t smoke. But I do laugh.”

“Dad says smoking can kill you, and laughter cures,” Eileen added. “So … their loss, right?”

“Right.” But I knew neither of us believed it. Would Ray have been embarrassed having me hang around with his buddies? Was I
his
secret?

I led the way back to the car, weaving a little farther out so I didn’t have to go by Wayne’s pickup. “Sorry about taking the long way, Eileen.” I turned around, but she wasn’t there. “Eileen?”

The lights began fading again. The movie was about to start. Great. What else could go wrong?

I retraced my steps until I found her standing next to a VW, staring off at something. “Eileen, you’re making us miss the movie.”

She didn’t budge. I couldn’t see her face—it had gotten dark without the parking lot lights on. I shut my eyes to get them used to the dark. Then I opened them.

Eileen was crying.

“Eileen? What’s wrong?”

Her hand went to her mouth, like she wanted to keep herself from screaming.

I stared where she was staring. Then I saw it—Butch’s daddy’s white Caddy. I could tell by the big wings in back. I could also tell that he had Laura with him—in the backseat. They were not watching the movie. They were making out, so slumped in the seat it was hard to tell where one began and the other left off.

I shuffled my box of food so I could take Eileen’s arm. “Come on. That guy’s—” I wanted to tell her the truth, that he wasn’t worth it. That she was worth a thousand Lauras, ten thousand Butches. But I knew that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. I just didn’t know what she
would
want to hear.

Words. Sometimes words just weren’t enough.

“We were about to come looking for you!” Dad took the food from us as we climbed into the backseat.

“Must have been crowded in the snack bar,” Mom said. “Don’t worry. You haven’t missed much. Need catching up?”

“We’re good.” I glanced at the silent Eileen. “We’ve seen enough.”

As soon as Mom’s head dropped to Dad’s shoulder and his arm snaked around her, Eileen and I escaped to Buddy’s roof. By silent agreement, we pulled one of the blankets over us. The last thing either of us wanted was to be seen.

We didn’t talk. I heard Eileen crunching popcorn. She must have heard me chomping peanuts.

We watched the movie. It didn’t take long for a Romeo and Juliet kind of love story to unfold. There were funny parts too—Officer Krupke cracked me up. He made me think of our sign-toting sheriff.

But the best part was the music. I wished Jack could have been there—he would have dug the strings and horns. Then when the dancing took off, I figured if Jack
had
been there, we would have danced on Buddy’s roof.

When all the characters rallied for the big finale, Eileen had to hold me down.

She climbed back inside the car before the lights came up. I tossed the blankets, then followed her.

“How did you like it?” Mom asked, once we got settled in.

“I loved it!” I answered.

“Me too,” Eileen said, without my enthusiasm.

Dad started singing the Officer Krupke song and nearly drove off with the speakers still hanging on the car. Mom stopped him just in time. Then he bullied his way into the line of cars aimed for the exit.

“Hey …” Mom craned her head around to stare out the back window. “Isn’t that Jack’s car?”

Eileen and I rolled down our windows to see better. “That’s Jack, all right,” Eileen said. “Who’s he with this time?”

Mom continued to stare. “Donna says it’s never the same girl twice.”

“That’s healthy, if you ask me,” Dad commented. “No sense getting tied down to one person at his age. Good for him.”

“But who is it?” Mom insisted. “Donna will want to know.”

“You mean there’s gossip concerning her own family that Donna doesn’t know about?” Dad pretended to be shocked.

“She says Jack has gotten so secretive. She can’t get a straight answer out of him.”

Mom and Eileen were crazy. I couldn’t see anybody except Jack. If I’d known he was here, he could have watched up on Buddy’s roof with Eileen and me.

“I see her now,” Mom said. “It’s Maggie Potts’s girl.”

I looked again. The girl slid a few inches away from Jack. She’d been sitting so close to him that I hadn’t seen her. “Suzi.” Suzi from the reservoir dance.

“That’s who I thought it was.” Eileen leaned back in the seat. “Suzi Potts was homecoming queen last year.”

I couldn’t have said why, but seeing Jack, or seeing Jack with Suzi, or whatever, poured cold water on the musical high I’d been feeling.

I could tell Eileen was searching for Butch’s car as we left. Thankfully, we didn’t see it.

On the drive home, Mom and Dad babbled on about the movie and the previews. Mom claimed the only way she’d see any Alfred Hitchcock movie was with earplugs and a blindfold.

When we turned off the highway to drive into Hamilton, everybody stopped talking. Hamilton was asleep. We crept up Main Street and crossed the railroad tracks with a
thump, thump
.

“Not again,” Mom said. “That poor man.” Then she laughed.

Dad laughed too. “You’d think the guy would learn.”

“What?” Eileen asked before I could. Then she cracked up too.

Finally, I saw why. In the center of Main Street, on a Mickey Mouse beach towel, sat Officer Duper’s official parking sign.

“Now that’s funny,” I said.

Then just like that, we stopped laughing. A dry silence filled our car. I wondered if Mom and Dad and Eileen were thinking what I was thinking. All the problems that had been facing us before we escaped to the drive-in were still waiting for us. And what if those problems were just previews of worse things about to play out in our lives?

The second we walked into the house, the phone rang.

“I’ll take that blindfold and earplugs now, please,” Mom said, without her original humor.

We might have taken the stupid phone off the hook if we’d been a normal family. But Dad had to be available for certain patients. He gave a secret ring code to pregnant women and really sick patients so they could reach him in the middle of the night—ring once, hang up, call again. Or ring three times, then two. That way, we didn’t always have to answer the regular rings at night.

The phone rang and rang as the four of us stood in the dark kitchen and listened to it.

“Let’s have some ice cream before bed,” Dad suggested, turning on the lights.

I glanced at Mom, expecting her to tell Dad he was crazy. Ice cream at this hour? After what we’d eaten at the drive-in? I waited for Eileen to say she couldn’t afford the calories.

Mom turned toward the fridge. “Hot fudge?”

Eileen was right on Mom’s heels. “Whipped cream!”

“Cool!” I grabbed the jar of cherries and followed Dad into the backyard. Branches of our tamarack tree caught my arm when I tried to slip out. Dad wouldn’t trim that tree for anything. As far as I knew, Mom had never asked him to. As for me, I would have cried at the loss of a single branch, though I couldn’t have said why.

Mom and Eileen bumped the door for help. Dad opened it, and I reached for sundaes, while Eileen and Mom shimmied outside.

We plopped down on the grass, ignoring chiggers and
bugs and whatever mysteries lurked in our backyard. Midge took turns begging for handouts before settling onto my lap.

“There’s the Big Dipper,” Eileen said.

“And the Little Dipper.” Mom pointed, but she didn’t need to. Both dippers shone like they were sending us secret, urgent messages from the heavens.

“You can see Boötes the Herdsman and his faithful hounds. Look! There’s his shepherd’s crook!” Dad sounded as proud as if he’d shot that constellation into the sky himself.

For a second, I wondered if people in Vietnam could see the same sky we were seeing. The same Big and Little Dipper. The same Herdsman. And what if a Vietnamese girl happened to be looking up at the sky at that very moment, wondering if an American girl was gazing up and seeing the same sky as hers?

I breathed in the night and wished the ice cream would stop melting.

And the phone would stop ringing.

But then I thought: Let it ring.

We are the kind of family that sees shapes in stars. We write when we have to, when we want to and need to. We go to drive-ins together and eat hot fudge sundaes after midnight. And we are a family that won’t trim a tamarack tree, even though it means we have to duck to get out to the backyard.

For the second Sunday in a row, the Taylors and the Adamses did not make music together. I didn’t know how much more I could take.

The anonymous notes kept coming. I even found one in Midge’s doghouse.

Great.

I hadn’t forgotten my promise to write about the Kinneys for the
Hamiltonian
. I sure didn’t want to disappoint Randy. And I really did want to know what happened—maybe more than ever. I just couldn’t figure out how to ask Mrs. Kinney about it without wrecking the little bit of trust she seemed to have in me.

Jack stopped by the pool on Wednesday and we talked. Right away, he picked up on my blue funk. “Tree, you gotta snap out of it. Breaking our Sunday night tradition is a drag. But never fear! I’ll get Donna and Bob to your pad next Sunday or my name’s not Jack.”

In spite of everything, I believed him.