Wild Roses (10 page)

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Here's what I thought then. I was surrounded by
lunatics. Dad was as bad as Dino. Okay, maybe not, but you know what I mean. It
occurred to me then that there was very little in the world that wasn't
ridiculous to the point that it made no sense. Putting on neckties was pretty
weird, when you came to think of it. Ditto nylon stockings, and grown men using
sticks to knock little white balls into cups, and government-access television
stations. What the hell was normal, anyway? I mean, my God, something is strange
with the world when pompoms are a status symbol. Aliens would someday look at us
with completely baffled expressions. Dogs already do.

I'd let my father have his lunacy, mostly
because there wasn't anything I could do about it anyway. Control is easier to
relinquish when you have no choice. Besides, I told myself, what he was doing
was harmless, wasn't it?

Here was another funny but not funny thing.
Remember the poor dweeb walking his dog in the rain? That poor dweeb was Dino,
and that was Dog William, made unrecognizable by hair glued to his body with
water and by his miserable expression. When I came home that night, Dino's wet
wool coat was hung over the stair rail, smelling like a barn animal. His soaking
socks were curled up in something that resembled embarrassment on the hall
floor. He was walking around the kitchen in his bathrobe, his curly hair
straight as a pencil, nothing like the simmering photo of him on the cover of
his Paris journals. It struck me that Dino had aged. Maybe since the
day

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before. Mom was drying Dog William in a towel.
He looked cute for the first time in his life.

"Jeez. What happened here?" I said.

"Dino felt like a snack. Got caught in the
rain," Mom said. She didn't seemed concerned. In fact, she seemed content, just
drying off poor old Dog William.

"Hey," I said. "I saw you. I didn't know it was
you."

"You could have given him a ride," Mom said.
Yeah, I could have just invited him right on in the car with Dad. It'd be a
nice, calm ride. Like when they transport violent criminals across state
lines.

"I don't mind the rain," Dino said. "Good for
the skin." He pinched one of his cheeks. He was pretty cheerful for someone who
appeared recently shipwrecked. It must have been a good day--the weirdness of
the car ride the night before had disappeared as quickly as it had
come.

"He looks sweet," I said, pointing my chin
toward Dog William.

Dino batted his eyelashes.

"Not you," I said. "The dog."

"My heart is broken," he said.

"How's this?" Mom put the towel around Dog
William's face. It hung down his back, nun-style. "Sister Mary
William."

"Dog with a bad habit," I said.

Dog William had enough of religion and took off
like he was late for his bus. He was probably rolling around on the carpet,
fluffing up and getting dog hair everywhere.

"I got us something," Dino said. He opened the
brown

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bag that was on the counter. Really, it did
this soggy tear, as the bag, too, was drenched. Dino held up a package of
Hostess Cupcakes and a packet of Corn Nuts. Hey, good taste. Usually he won't
put anything near his mouth that doesn't have some hyperculinary aspect to it.
Sun-dried gorgonzola, rosemary cilantro crepes with raspberry sauce, that kind
of crap.

He opened the cupcakes, even approached them
the right way, by peeling off the icing and eating that first. I had a little
surge of positive feeling. One of those maybe-everything-will-be-okay rushes of
hope that usually only comes to me after a big swig of Zebe's espresso. Dino put
his arms around Mom. He lifted up her hair, kissed her neck. She leaned into
him, and I could see the chemistry between them. I hated to see it, but I did. I
knew it explained some things about why Mom was with him.

Dino left the kitchen and went into his office
in his bathrobe. I heard him tuning and then the brief fits and starts of
playing, which meant that Dino was writing. Mom made a cup of tea, sat down at
the kitchen table, and warmed her hands around the mug. I had some too, even
though it was the kind of tea that tasted like licking a grass welcome mat. Mom
tilted her head and we both listened to Dino create, as Mom's own cello leaned
in the corner like a bad drunk. She looked pretty. She took a barrette from her
pocket, pulled her hair back. Her face was peaceful. She smiled. "He had a good
day of writing. An awesome day," she said.

"He seems really happy," I said. She did
too.

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"He said that for the first time in his life,
it's coming easily. Maybe I was worried for nothing." "That's great,
Mom."

"We may make it to March after all," she
said.

"You don't have to lurk back there," I said to
Siang Chibo the next day after we got to my house. "Just walk with us, for God's
sake. The stalking has got to go. You make me feel like I'm in one of those
horror movies where you know something awful's gonna happen and the girl's car
never starts."

"I can't walk with her. She makes me
nervous."

"Who, Courtney? Just pretend you're watching
bad TV That's how I get through most of the school day."

"She makes me feel like a loser."

"Don't ever feel that way. You are not a loser.
You are so smart. Courtney could only fantasize about being so smart. You know
how some people laugh at their own jokes? Courtney can't. She doesn't get her
own jokes."

Siang smiled. "Is Mr. Cavalli here
today?"

"No. He's at the dentist getting his teeth
cleaned. Gingivitis." Lie. But I tried to toss Siang some reality every now and
then. Just to keep the adoration at manageable levels.

Disgusting gum disease didn't dampen Siang's
enthusiasm one bit. "Let's go in his office."

"Ooh, okay. That'll be a memory I can put in my
scrap-book. You can't touch anything, though, because he's been writing. If you
mess anything up in there, I'm dead."

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I knew I'd made a mistake the second I opened
the door. At first I only saw the mess of papers, empty pages, all empty white
sheets strewn around on the desk and the chair and the floor and around by the
windows. It was easy for your eye to be drawn to the one page that wasn't blank,
the one that was smeared with blood. It was crumpled up, as if it had been used
as a towel to clean up some bleeding, and that's probably just what had
happened. It lay among some shards of glass, a pile of crystally chunks, the
remnants of the frame that had held William Tiero's picture that had obviously
been thrown against the wall, same as that wineglass. The force had knocked the
print that hung above his desk, those yellowy flowers, askew. It was barely
hanging there, threatening to crash to the floor.

Siang gasped.

I tried to take in what I was seeing, but it
didn't seem real. Some awful feeling filled my heart--horror, shock. I felt like
the ground was suddenly pulled from underneath me, and that things were falling,
falling. He was writing, so everything was going to be okay. And here it was.
All of those empty pages. All of that frightening white.

"I'm not sure what's happened," I
said.

"Oh, my God," Siang whispered.

I wanted to shut the door. I wanted this out of
my sight. Those pages, that gash of blood, sucked the air right from me. I felt
a wave of shame, too, a sense of letting Siang down in an important way. I
reached for the knob, but Siang put her hand on my arm.

"Wait," she said. Siang stepped into the
office, did

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something I would respect her for forever. She
walked over to that painting above his desk and she straightened it. She made
sure it wouldn't fall.

Tears gathered tight and hot in my throat. I
just kept seeing Mom the other night with her tea and her happiness. I kept
thinking about our hope.

"It's okay," Siang said. She actually put her
thin arm around my shoulders. "Come on."

I closed the door behind Siang and me. The
latch clicked. I felt like I was trying to shut a monster into a room. A monster
that would not be held back for long by something so simple as a
lock.

I brought Mom to Dino's office when she came
home. I had to confess to her that I'd gone in there with Siang. Mom just stood
in the doorway where I had, held her hand to her mouth. Oh, dear God, she had
said. No.

That night, I didn't know where Dino was. His
car was gone. I knew where Mom was, though. I found her in their bathroom, the
pills from Dino's medicine bottles laid out along the counter so that she could
count them. The white pages sat in a stack on their bed. What you learn is,
stability is a moving target. What you learn is, destroyed hope is the most
profound loss of all.