Wild Roses (22 page)

"Wow," I said, mostly to be on the safe
side.

"It is a great release of negative energy,"
Chuck said. "Flows through your fingers and disperses into the universe,
floating away with your cares." He was sounding like a bubble bath
commercial.

"Speaking of negative energy," Bunny said. He
slurped his drink. He held it between his knees. Hey, Mom had that kind of cup
holder in her car, too.

"Have you noticed that Mozart's been a little
uptight?" Chuck said.

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"Just a little?" I didn't correct him on the
fact that Mozart never played the violin--we both knew who he was referring
to.

"Frankly I'm getting a little concerned about
him," Bunny said.

"His chakras are all blown to shit," Chuck
said.

My heart rose a little. I didn't know my chakra
from a hole in the ground, as the saying sort of goes. It sounded like something
you had in a Greek restaurant with a side of yogurt sauce, but who cared?
Someone else was on my side in this, this feeling that things were getting out
of control. I felt a surge of energy; the relief of someone helping you pick up
the other end of something heavy.

"He looks horrible," I said. "He looks so
tired."

"He left the dog out all night."

"He needs a day off, only his mother doesn't
see it," Bunny said. "I love her to death, but she can't see the forest for the
sea where that violin's concerned."

"Trees," Chuck said. "You moron. Forest for the
trees."

"Trees? That don't make any sense. Of course
you see trees in a forest."

"That's not what it means," Chuck
said.

"I don't care, all right? You know what I'm
saying."

"I agree," I said. "He needs a
rest."

"Sea," Chuck chuckled. "Heh, heh, heh. Forest
for the sea."

"Shut the hell up, Chuck. I heard you sing the
'Twelve Days of Christmas.'" "So what?"

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"Three French men, two turtle doves." "No one
knows all those words. It's a fucking long song."

"Three French men? Wee wee, monsieur. Jacques,
Pierre, and Luc," Bunny said.

"It's the stupidest and most boring song in
history. I was only trying to jazz it up."

"I don't know if there's anything we can do," I
said. "About Ian." I was trying to get them back on track. Something about this
reminded me of the time I dropped our old thermometer and mercury bounced
crazily all over the bathroom floor.

"Why don't you sit down here in the back for a
minute and we'll make a plan," Chuck said. "Crouching over in the window like
that's gonna strain your lattisimus dorsi."

"Hey, he's my favorite Star Wars character," I
said. "I even had the action figure." I got in the back, shoved over Donna
Summer. "Groovy music. Boogie down." I waved the CD around between
them.

"Record club. I forgot to send in my
coupon."

"Same with this?" I held up the
book.

"Literary Guild," Bunny said.

"If you don't mind, I'm leaving the window
open," Chuck said. "Nothing worse than the smell of french fry grease when
you're not hungry."

"How about we take Ian on a trip?" Bunny
said.

"A trip? What kind of trip?" I
asked.

"It doesn't even matter. We just stick him in
the car and go. Make him relax. The kid's gonna break."

195

"He's flying out for his audition in two
weeks," I said. "We can't really take him on a trip."

"Okay, for the day then," Bunny said. He was
folding up the foil wrap from his hamburger into a decisive triangle.

"A day of rest and rejuvenation," Chuck said.
"One day off of practice is not gonna kill him. He keeps up like this . .
."

"We'll put him in the car. Pick you up," Bunny
said. Something about the three of us plotting there in the parked car made me
think of a bad movie with gangsters. "Tomorrow Do you have school?"

"I'm suddenly feeling a sore throat coming on,"
I said. "Eck, eck," I coughed.

"We don't want you getting into trouble," Chuck
said.

"I haven't missed a day yet this year," I said.
I was getting excited. Common sense hadn't quite caught up yet. It was just one
of those times where you're so happy to have an idea that you don't quite stop
to figure out if it's a good one.

"Mental health day," Chuck said. "I saw it on
my calendar."

"Where will we take him?" I asked.

"Just get in the car and go," Bunny
said.

"We'll figure something out," Chuck
said.

We decided on ten o'clock. I hopped out of the
car, feeling like I'd done a good thing. I actually thought I was helping. That
night I stayed in my room, afraid that my face would give away my secret. I
didn't sleep well, but only because I was excited and hopeful. Let's just make
it

196

clear that my lack of sleep had nothing to do
with premonition of disaster.

Every person above the age of seven knows how
to do it-- you sag your face down so that your eyes look lifeless, and then
slump in a chair like a sweatshirt tossed there by someone with bad aim. You've
got to hang over the chair a bit, your head on your arm, too heavy to hold
up.

"I feel like crap," I said to Mom. I lowered my
eyes, held my hand to my throat. "Hurts."

"I thought we were doing too well this year
with no one getting sick," she said. She was hurrying around to catch her
carpool, shoving random things in a brown bag for lunch. Someone needed to go to
the store. You opened the fridge door, and you could see your own reflection.
"Do you need to stay home?"

"I've got a test," I said. "I can't." Utter
brilliance. Applause, bow.

"If you're sick, you're sick," she said. "You
know how I feel about that."

"I know," I said. Yep, I knew.

She put her hand on my forehead, cold from the
fridge. "You are warm," she said. And in case this gives the impression that Mom
wasn't too smart, I'd better correct that right here. She was hugely smart, read
all the time and knew something about everything. But she was someone who tended
to get absentminded when she had a lot on her mind. The week before she'd walked
into my math class while it was in session because she was a week
early

197

for conferences, and a couple of days before
that, she left the water running in the bathroom while hand washing a sweater. I
found water spilling over the counter and soaking the rug.

"I'll call the school," she said. "Back to
bed." Which would have been the three most fantastic words in the human language
if I didn't have better things to do. You may be wondering if I felt the least
bit bad about deceiving my mother right then. Or at least maybe I'm wondering
it, looking back. And the answer is no, I didn't feel one bit bad. Or at least
the parts of me that might have felt bad were silenced by the importance of what
I was doing. Sometimes Tightness was bigger than lies. And if Mom did get mad
over what I did for love, well, hey--what I was doing seemed pretty mild
compared to throwing away a home and a man and a family and a shared toaster and
vacation photos and a sock drawer with intermingled socks, for the possibility
(impossibility) of forever, tortured romance with the Prozac poster boy, People
magazine's Most Fucked-Up Man Alive.

I went back to bed for a while, and lay there
with my eyes wide open and my heart racing, like a kid on Christmas Eve. Mom
came up and kissed me on the cheek and reminded me to stay quiet for Dino, as
he'd be home working. No problem, I said. I'd be so quiet, it'd be like I wasn't
even there.

I watched out my window for the Datsun, and
grabbed my coat and went outside when I saw it come up the street. I opened the
back door and climbed in beside Ian.

198

There was a handkerchief lying beside him, as
if they had tried to blindfold him or something. It really was like a bad
gangster movie. There was even a violin case on the seat.

"So you're in on this, too, huh?" he
said.

"Mission accomplished!" Bunny said.

"Partners in crime," I said. "We were worried
about you," I said to Ian.

"As long as I'm back before practice," Ian
said. "You guys know I've got to get ready." I checked Ian's face for signs that
he was pissed off, and saw only the tight, tired face I'd gotten used
to.

"Oh, we know you've got to get ready. Yes,
sir," Bunny said.

"I mean it, Bun. Two-thirty max." "Full tank of
gas and a road atlas. We'll make it to Malibu by sundown." "Not funny," Ian
said. "Where we headed?" I said.

"It's a surprise," Chuck said. "You got enough
room, or should I move up my seat?" "Perfect," I said.

And it was. Just being there in the backseat
with Ian in his long coat that smelled of coffee and cinnamon, knees touching.
Riding down my street with that delicious feeling of everyone else being in
their normal routine, poor suckers, while you were having a new day. It was cold
but bright out, a nice show of sun that added a couple of notches to the cheer
level. I picked up Ian's hand. It was dry and chapped from the cold, as if the
last

199

weeks were slowly sucking the moisture from
him.

We drove through town, past the Chinese
restaurant with its plastic-covered menus, and the real estate office with its
pictures of Seabeck homes in the windows. We didn't have many tourists this time
of year, so the Gift Gallery, selling wind chimes with ferryboats and tacky
sweatshirts with plastic whale decals, was quiet, as was the hemp clothing store
(run by the perpetually stoned Mrs. Ramadon), and the bookstore/coffeehouse,
which had the best coffee cake of anywhere in the universe. We headed down to
the ferry docks, past Ian's house, and Bunny bought a ticket from Evan
Malloney's dad in the ticket booth. I wondered if Evan Malloney's dad knew what
we all knew about Evan Malloney--that he was already a drunk. The kind that made
people so uneasy they steered clear of them. Like anyone whose future you could
see (the terminally ill, ninety-year-olds, girls who slept around) it was too
much reality to want to look at.

"If we're getting on the ferry, we've got to
watch the sailing times," Ian said.

"Would you relax, for Christ's sake?" Bunny
said. "That is the whole point of this journey. I'm going to make you do some
relaxation exercises."

"Oh, God. Anything but that," Ian said. "I'm
relaxed, okay?" He shook his hands and turned his neck in a circle, the way Mom
did whenever she was getting a headache. "Mellowness has come." This was the Ian
I loved.

We parked in the loading lane behind a camper.
Its

200

license plate read captain ed. He had a bumper
sticker that said home of the big redwoods.

"Just do it. Picture yourself somewhere you
want to be," Bunny said. "A beach. A mountain cabin."

"Very original ideas, Bun," Ian
said.

"What you want me to say, a Taco Time? A Jiffy
Lube?"

"I'm in a boat on a lake," Chuck
said.

His head was resting back against the seat. I
could see in the window reflection that his eyes were closed.

"Cassie, you too. Close your eyes."

I closed my eyes. Snored loudly. Ian cracked
up.

"Find your place of inner peace," Bunny
said.

"It's sunny on the boat," Chuck said. "There
aren't even any waves. I just had a big roast beef sandwich. I'm thinking I
should have remembered sun lotion. Damn, I wish I had a beer."

"Would you shut the hell up, Chuck, I'm trying
to relax these people."

"Okay, go ahead. Move along, Bun. I've got my
quiet place." Ian poked my leg. He mouthed bowling alley.

"School cafeteria," I whispered.

"Airport runway," he whispered back.

"I hear a splash," Chuck said. "I look up. Some
asshole in another boat just tossed in an empty can of Mr. Pibb. Man, that
pisses me off. I hate litterers."

"Now, start at your toes. You feel them getting
heavy. They are totally relaxed. Your foot is relaxed."

I held up one shoe, swirled it around. Ian put
a finger through the lace and dangled my foot from it.

201

"Now your calf is relaxed. Now your shin. Your
lower legs have never felt so relaxed." Something about this wasn't right. Maybe
I didn't know about these things, but it seemed pretty damn impossible to relax
a bone.

"Not the shin," Chuck said, reading my mind.
"You don't relax the shin."

"Okay, the leg. The leg. Your leg is relaxed,
all right? Go back to the lake, Chuck, Jesus, and let me do my work." He reached
for the pack of gum on the dashboard, pulled the little red plastic thread and
picked out a stick. He popped it into his mouth, and crinkled up the foil into a
little ball and tossed it at Chuck.