Missing, Chapter 2--So Much Mine
Title: Missing, Chapter 2--So Much Mine
Author: vacheqirit
Rating: R for language
Spoilers: Six months post-"State"
Disclaimers: FNL and these characters are the properties of their owners. No infringements intended.
Author's Note: I guess I've committed to riding this wave. Please offer your feedback so it can be a fun ride for all.
You know you've got my hands,
and you've got your father's eyes -
lovely, bold eyes
I know that it's not fair, but things aren't always what they
seem - and now I worry so -
Where you'll lay your head, where you'll sleep tonight,
Way up high, why, oh why can't I
Someone's pillow's cold, someone loved you so.
Where's the heart in me that made the one in you so cold,
Please don't go.
'Cause I know where you got that dress, I know where you
learned to walk like that
'Cause you were so much, so much mine
now I reach for you
and I cannot find you
So much, so much mine
now I reach for you and I cannot find you.
Jonatha Brooke and The Story, So Much Mine
***
Pam Garrity was alone that Saturday night. The kids were with Buddy for their twice-a-month weekend visitation. There had been no word from Lyla, no further developments in her diappearance. The police were still calling it a missing person’s case, but the longer she was gone, the less likely it would be that she’d be found. Pam wasn’t sleeping much anymore, her mind wandering down every ugly path that this ugly situation had cast before her, every day crowded with thoughts too terrifying to look at squarely but too insistent to be put in deep storage, much as she wished she could.
But she could not.
Nor could she speak about the horror of this uncertainty with anyone without the frustration of it choking her. She listened to her friends’ worried voices, heard their attempts at comforting words as if through whirlwind, and dismissed them all as soon as she could reasonably extricate herself from their company. She spent much of her time alone, trying to dig into her daughter’s psyche based on the cascade of events that had defined the past year: Jason’s injury, that self-destructive fling with Riggins and the very public scorn heaped on her afterwards, the engagement and break-up, Buddy and his...ways. And all this in addition to being a graduating senior with so much to anticipate in a matter of months...her presumptive escape to college and a new life. Why now? Why would this happen now?
She went round in circles, she knew, never making any particular progress. But she persisted in trying to tease skeins of sense out of a senseless situation. But she was also avoiding something, something that could possibly offer clues, even answers, as to Lyla’s whereabouts. Pam wasn’t sure she wanted to see what was there, to have Lyla’s thoughts and feelings so baldly articulated for anyone to see. And the probable withering, scathing rebukes that she may have laid on Pam and Buddy. It was worse, even, than contemplating reading any diary her daughter might have kept.
Because this so-called ‘blog’ of hers...it was public. Strangers and friends alike, all invited to the slam. She desperately hoped that her other children would never see it. Did they know Lyla’s screenname? Did they know the web address? Pam had kept the address tucked in a fake book in the office, one that looked like all the other hardcovers up on a top shelf but was hollow. She kept extra money there, the keys to the safe deposit box at the bank, the deed to a piece of property her father had left her that Buddy didn’t know about.
The biggest secret, somehow, was that piece of paper with Lyla’s blog address.
She’s been gone about two weeks now. There was no point in pretending that this situation was short-term any longer. It was going to take a while to find her. And the longer it took, the harder it would be for life to approximate anything but a nightmare.
So it was time. The children were gone for the weekend. She couldn’t concentrate on much of anything, not TV, not reading, certainly not her scrapbooking. There hadn’t been an event worth commemorating in months. She’d planned on doing a whole separate book for Lyla’s graduation, but that had been tabled. Indefinitely.
The house was empty, the computer glowing in its place on the office desk. There would be no better time.
It was time.
Pam sat down at the computer and typed in, “soouttahere.blogspot.com.”
She began at the beginning, with Lyla’s first entry.
***
It was another weekend without Coach in town. Tami had extricated a promise from Julie that they would have dinner together that night and stay in for Girls’ Night, an arcane Taylor tradition that had fallen into disuse since Matt had started to have dibs on Julie’s free time. Tami was routinely tired, uncomfortable, and very, very lonely without Eric. Julie was only somewhat sympathetic.
“Yeah, well, I miss him too, Mom, and I don’t mope around like you do,” she remarked as they cleaned up their spaghetti dinner. “It’s sort of annoying.”
“So, how would you be, if Matt were in Austin most of the time, and you missed him?” Tami took a large spoon out of the cutlery drawer and put it to work scooping out bounteous servings of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Haagen Dazs. No skimping on calories or cost tonight.
Julie considered the question.
“I’d get him to come visit. Or I’d go there.”
Tami licked the spoon and dropped it into her bowl with a clatter. Might as well use it and not dirty another. Teaspoon-sized implements weren’t really up to the task at hand anyway.
“Sounds easy. But it isn’t. Your dad’s got weekend commitments, and so do you, and so do I, for that matter.” She walked over to the couch and sat down. “Not to mention that little detail of...I’M VERY PREGNANT.” She let out a long,, exasperated sigh.
“Right. Always the pregnancy thing,” scoffed Julie. “That’s such a great excuse. I’ll tuck that nugget away to use when the time is right.”
“Which will be be years and years from now,” her mother added.
“I wish you didn’t need to use it, either.” Julie brought her bowl to the couch as well.
“Well, I’m sorry, Jules, but you’ll just have to trust me on this...pregnancy is tough. Especially at my age.”
“Sure. It’s tough. It’s inconvenient. It’s expensive. So remind me why you’re bothering to do it?” She couldn’t help the snark leak into her voice.
Her mother put down her spoon.
“What?”
Julie looked away. “It...I don’t understand. Why you’d want to do this now. I never...I just never, ever thought about having a sister, or a brother, or...anything.” Julie looked at her shoes.
“Well, we always wanted to have another baby, honey, but it just didn’t happen and it just didn’t happen, and then...it did. We didn’t plan for it.” Tami tried to stroke Julie’s hair, but she turned her face away.
“Yeah, but...you didn’t plan NOT to have one, either.” She stood up.
Tami found herself taken off guard by this riposte.
“Honey...that’s...that’s really not an appropriate comment.”
“Why not?” snapped Julie. “It’s ‘appropriate’ for you to tell me how I’m too young to have sex, and have I thought about consequences and diseases and pregnancy and all that...” She sat up in her seat. “So why can’t I comment on your apparent carelessness when it comes to birth control?”
“It’s not the same thing. Your father and I are committed to each other, we’ve been married for twenty years, and if a baby happened to come along again, which she has, we’d be happy and ready for it. That’s just not the situation you and Matt are in.”
“Don’t bring him into this. This is about you and me and Dad.” Julie was still running hot.
“Sweetheart, this is a gift. This baby is an amazing gift. At my age, there are no guarantees that you can get pregnant, or have a healthy baby, or a good pregnancy, but everything is going so well, we are blessed...”
“Don’t use that ‘blessed’ thing to describe this! Dad isn’t here, you’re tired and like, crazy all the time, nothing about this is good. And when it gets here...”
“When she gets here, Julie. We should start to use the right words for her. She’s real, she’s going to be a baby, a new person...”
“Stop! She’s...it’s...just a lot of cells and mucous, and...and...whatever,” fussed Julie. “Can’t things ever just be normal around here for, like, even a few days? I swear, we’re just, like, Disaster-Central, whatever.”
“Don’t use that kind of language, all that Teen Speak,” Tami retorted. “That’s not how you talk, Julie, as if you were some bubbleheaded...”
“’Bubbleheaded...’ what, Mom? Cheerleader? Rally girl? Yeah, I’m not, and I know they’re what pass for ‘normal’ around here...but Newsflash!...I AM a teen! I AM like other girls, especially other girls who have lame-ass excuses for parents, ones that can’t make up their minds about how to handle priorities like new jobs and their daughter’s happiness, who can’t get it together enough to know when they should be done with procreating...”
“That’s enough. No insults. We’re above that.”
“You know, I really thought it was everyone else around here who’s delusional, but come to find out, it’s actually MY family that’s completely divorced from reality. That’s...that’s it. That’s exactly it. It’s like you guys have gotten divorced but haven’t even figured out how to do that right. We’re just stuck in this limbo, waiting for the Beast to arrive to make everything shiny and happy again..”
Tami tried to interrupt but Julie was on a tear.
“So I’m just gonna go over to my boyfriend’s now, because his parents aren’t around to screw him up and his grandma loves us and leaves us alone...so maybe I can be a NORMAL teenager, maybe hang out, listen to music, maybe have sex if I feel like it...” She grabbed her purse from the kitchen counter and headed towards the front door. “That’s what’s really normal, Mom, in case you weren’t quite sure. Maybe I should give you some tutorials so that when the kids at school come to you next fall you have some kind of basis for giving them advice.”
“Don’t you leave, Julie...Julie...” Tami called after her.
Julie came back around the corner of the kitchen to grab her mother’s car keys off the counter. “Oh, and while we’re on the subject, I don’t think the principle and the other parents would be too happy to hear that you think their precious little girls are a bunch of bubbleheaded twots.”
Tami wasn’t exactly sure what a ‘twot’ was, but somehow she knew it was very, very bad.
“Are you done now? Julie? Get...get...” Tami scraped herself off the couch just in time to hear the front door slam.
Girls Night. Perhaps never to return to its regular spot in the weekend rotation.
***
That night was also a significant evening for Landry. Tyra had agreed to let him accompany her to a party at a friend of a friend’s house. Tyra didn’t know the girl who was hosting, but that was part of the appeal. She hoped it would be a new crowd, with minimal numbers of Panthers, ex-Panthers, their girlfriends and friends and entourages. Anything for a new experience.
Landry was only too happy to provide the transportation. He had tried to get Tyra to consider dinner out before the party, but she had dismissed the notion immediately, saying she wanted to study until they left for the party.
Landry was beginning to wonder if Tyra were really as dedicated to her studies as her schedule suggested.
He arrived at her house at nine, as instructed. Tyra was waiting for him and didn’t even allow him in the door.
“Great, on time, as always. Let’s go,” she said, breezing by him on the doorstep on the way to the wagon. “It’ll take a bit to get out there, and I don’t want to get home too late.”
Landry followed her back to the wagon. She’d already taken a seat in the passenger side, or Landry would have held the door for her.
“Gettin’ up early tomorrow for church?” Landry teased. “I could give you a ride there, too, you know.” He closed the driver’s side door and turned the key in the ignition.
“I prefer to talk to God on my own terms, thanks,” Tyra replied as they pulled out on to the street.
“What, like, silently?” asked Landry.
“No, like...not at all.”
“You probably talk to him all the time, you just don’t realize you’re doing it,” said Landry matter-of-factly. “That’s all prayer is...those times when you’re stuck and need help and you tell youself you just need that one thing to happen, and everything will work out OK...” He paused. “That’s prayer.”
“Landry, I think I’d know if I were praying, OK? It’s Saturday night, we’re going to a party where we’re gonna do some underage drinking, maybe enjoy a few controlled substances, engage in fornication and other un-Godly activities...”
Landry’s eyes all but popped out of his head.
“Fornication? I’m...if we’re gonna do that, I need to make a pit stop...”
Tyra laughed.
“Kidding! Totally kidding. Well, other people might be doing some fornicating, but that’s their business.” She looked out the window as they took the on ramp to the interstate. “I’m just happy to get out of Dillon for a few hours.”
Landry took a deep breath and turned on the radio in an attempt to hide his crashing disappointment about this clarification of the night’s activities. He tried to chat about this and that, but Tyra wasn’t very responsive. Eventually, they drove in silence while Crucifictorius thrashed its way through its entire six-song repertoire on the stereo.
The ride to the party took them by several towns, each no different than the last. Landry wondered why getting out of Dillon seemed so important to Tyra when their destination was likely just a carbon copy of their home town.
It was close to ten by the time they arrived. The party was in full swing. No one noticed them as they made their way through the front door. Landry had considered trying to find the hostess, a girl named Lindsay, but there didn’t seem to be much point. No one cared if they were quasi-crashing or not.
Tyra found the keg in short order and filled a cup for herself, then held it out to Landry.
“Are you drinking tonight? I’m never sure with you.”
He took the cup.
“One won’t hurt. I should be fine to drive home.”
“You better be, ‘cause I’m planning on taking full advantage of the open bar tonight,” said Tyra, plying another cup with suds. “Now don’t stick to me like lint all night. Go mingle. We’ll catch up with each other later.”
“But we came together...” Landry protested.
“Landry, c’mon...even if you go to a party with your boyfriend, or, girlfriend, you always do your own thing. Then later you can compare notes, see who said what about whom, all that. It’s the only way to go.” She moved off into the room, not waiting for him to follow.
“Well, OK. If...if that’s how boyfriends and girlfriends do it,” he replied, mostly to himself.
Time passed. Tyra got her share of admiring looks from various guys, but it took some time for one to approach her.
“Man, talk about ‘Beauty and the Geek,’” said a taller, older-looking guy as he sidled up to her, indicating Landry with a nod of his head. Landry was on the other side of the room, half-listening to the girl talking next to him as he kept an eye on Tyra. Landry saw her regarding him and tipped his cup to her.
“Yeah, well...he’s just my ride,” Tyra replied, turning away. “Geeks are good for that kind of thing.”
“Really,” said the guy, turning with her to look out the window. “So for the rest of us...”
“Who aren’t geeks?” said Tyra, smiling slightly.
“...who aren’t geeks...” agreed the guy. “What do you think we might be good for?”
“I have some notions,” Tyra teased. “Care to tell me if I’m right or not?”
“Surely. Why don’t we just step into my office over there...” He inclined his head towards a back hall which no doubt led to the bedrooms. They were just starting to move in that direction when Landry appeared at Tyra’s side.
“Hey, need me to top up your beer?” he asked, smiling at her.
Tyra pursed her lips and looked into her cup. She glanced at the guy and they shared a knowing look.
“You know what, Landry, I could use something with a little more kick now.” She held out her cup. “Think you could go mix me up a cosmopolitan?”
Landry blinked. “A...what?”
Tyra shook the cup at him. “You know, what they drank on ‘Sex and the City.’ It’s got a bunch of different stuff in it...cranberry juice, vodka, lime juice...something else, I think...”
“Triple sec,” added the guy. He suppressed a smile. No way that would be stocked in this house.
“Yeah, that’s it. Think you can whip up one of those for me, Lando?” Tyra all but batted her eyes at him.
“Uh, I don’t...I’m not sure I know...” Landry was obviously at a loss as to how to proceed.
The guy took him by the shoulder and steered him towards the kitchen bar. “Go check out what they’ve got, and if you need anything, there’s a Quik Mart a couple miles down the road, at the intersection with 514.” He made his way back to Tyra. “We’ll just be over here while you get all that worked out.”
Landry stood looking at them.
“Thanks, Landry. You’re the best.” Tyra delivered the killer line with the brightest of smiles, then moved off with her companion towards the back of the house.
Landry immediately recognized this fool’s errand for what it was: a blatant dismissal, and worse, an rejection so final that he considered leaving the party that very second and let Tyra work out the details of getting home. He retreated to a far corner and fumed, willing himself not to show how she had cut him to the quick and left him to bleed while she did...who knows what, with who knows whom...
After a reasonable interval that would suggest he’d been socializing or attempting to have a good time after this exchange, he went looking for Tyra.
She and the unnamed guy were making out in the dimly-lit back hall. All the bedroom doors were closed, suggesting they may have missed out on snagging a more private space. Landry approached them.
“Hey Tyra, it’s getting late, time for me to hit the road,” he said, too brightly. “Are you still needing a ride, or can you get one...” He cleared his throat. “....or can you find another way home?”
Tyra disengaged from the guy and gave Landry the dirtiest of looks.
“Now? We need to go now?”
Landry brought his full-on Geek Mode, just to mess with her head.
“Well, sure, it’s past midnight, and you know I have to be at Sunday School early tomorrow. We’re having a guest speaker who’s been in Micronesia on a mission this past year. I wouldn’t want to be too tired to enjoy that.”
Tyra’s eyes widened, and she choked out an answer.
“Well, since you put it that way...” She tucked her hair behind one ear and looked up at the guy.
“Another time, perhaps?” she said, picking up her purse from the floor. “I’m in the book. Collette...C-O-L...”
Landry took her by the elbow and directed her down the hall.
“Got to run, Tyra, or the chariot’s gonna turn into a pumpkin!” he said with grating cheer. “I’m sure he knows all he needs to know about you.” They sailed through the living room and were quickly out the front door. “He won’t be calling. Just in case you were wondering.”
“Like you’d know so much about it,” she snapped. “Real classy, Landry. Did you have to put on the Bible-thumper routine just to get me out of there?”
“If the shoe fits, right Tyra? Guess I can’t help myself sometimes. I just can’t help but revert to form and be the ‘good boy.’” He opened the door of the wagon, sat down and started the engine without waiting for Tyra to get settled first.
On the way home, Landry tuned the radio to a rock station and cranked up the volume, effectively eliminating any type of conversation. Tyra knew she was being reprimanded, which stung despite the fact that she’d engineered the evening to end just this way. It was time to let Landry in on the joke: that he was never going to be boyfriend material, at least, not for her. She didn’t have the courage to let him down gently. That just wasn’t her way.
But if she thought she was getting off with just an assault on her eardrums, she was mistaken.
After several screaming minutes hurtling down the interstate, Landry punched the radio off. The ensuing silence was louder than any screeching guitars.
“Why did you do that?” He glanced over to her. “Really. I want to know.”
“What? Do what?” She feigned ignorance poorly.
“Don’t...don’t do that. You know exactly what I mean. You tried to send me on a wild goose chase just so’s you could get some play with that guy. I thought I was your date, and then you diss me like that...”
“Hold up...you weren’t my ‘date,’ Landry. I said we could go together. That’s not a date.”
He shook his head. “Really. So why do think I asked you to go tonight? Because you think I get my rocks off by spending my money on gas so I can drive people like you and Matt and Julie wherever you want to go, just to have something to DO?” He floored the gas and the wagon lurched forward.
“Here’s some news for you, Tyra...I like to think I’m a good Christian. I like to help people, I try to ask myself, ‘What would Jesus do?’ in certain situations, maybe even in situations like tonight. And believe me, it’s not easy to do that. ESPECIALLY like tonight.” He stopped talking for a moment, as if considering how much more to say.
“But that’s not how I am all the time. Sometimes, I actually want things for myself, like a date with a beautiful girl who seems perfectly happy to spend time with me when she needs my help with something, or maybe, when she needs a little attention that she’s not getting from the people she wants to get attention from...” His voice trailed off as his though process grew more complicated.
“You know, you can’t play that ‘I didn’t know that’s what you meant’ shit with me anymore. You’re smart, and you know what you want, but sometimes, you don’t want to deal with things and you hide. You hid tonight. You used that guy to avoid dealing with me. I knew you weren’t into him. You just didn’t want to have me around, when people might wonder if we were...dare I say it...actually ‘together.’ So you embarrassed me and used me instead.”
Tyra was silent. She had no snappy rejoinder.
Landry continued. “Well, I guess I’ve finally gotten your message. So here’s mine: I’m done. Your safe guy is done.” He took the exit towards Dillon, barely slowing down as he did so.
“So glad I could be of service, all these nights when you needed a ride, when you needed help with your studying, when you needed somebody you could manipulate so you could feel better about yourself. It’s been a pleasure serving you.” He turned down the street towards Tyra’s house.
“I hope you’ll write me an excellent recommendation.”
***
By the time Julie made it to the Saracen’s, she was ashamed at herself for having lost it so utterly with her mother, when they were supposed to be having a girls night, one she couldn’t expect to have many more of before The Beast arrived in August. Matt hadn’t been expecting to see her that night, but when she knocked on the screen door, his smile at seeing her made her relax.
“Hey, did...did we have plans tonight, ‘cause I thought...” he began.
Julie came through the door into the living room, shaking her head.
“No, I...I just needed to take a break from Drama Central, that’s all.” She deposited herself on the couch with a bounce. “Is it OK? I should’ve called, but I had to get out of there...”
“No, no, it’s fine.” Matt let the screen door fall back into place and came to sit with her. “We’re done with dinner, Grandma said she’s gonna read a little before her show comes on in a while...”
Julie tucked her head into his shoulder and leaned into him. “Can we just...hang out...?”
Matt kissed the top of her head.
“Sure. We could go sit on the hammock. I actually dusted it off the other day.”
The heat of the day still lingered in the tiny house, the blast torch effect of sun and humidity making it hard going for the ancient window A/C units to cool the interior. But the evening was softening as the sun lowered in the sky. Outside it would be cooler.
They brought plastic cups full of ice and water out to the backyard, where the canvas hammock, stretched between its support poles, occupied the far corner of the garden, slightly hidden from the back of the cottage by a storage shed. They had never gotten into a hammock together before and it took a little coordination for them not to end up on the ground in a heap of arms and legs. They laughed at each other and tried to maintain their balance as they took their positions, Matt in back, Julie sitting between his legs. The hammock was swaying with great energy by the time they were settled.
They adjusted themselves, experimenting with positions to find the most comfortable arrangement. Matt eventually got the headrest centered just where he needed it under his neck, and Julie was well secured in his lap, her back in full contact with his torso, her head just to one side of his chin, resting on his shoulder. The hammock’s swing slowly dwindled to a gentle drifting, side to side and back again.
The canvas of the hammock was rough to the touch, both dusty and mildewed, but all hammocks seem to feel and smell like this one, so it was familiar to them both, though not a sensation they had ever shared. The heat of the day had warmed the fabric through, and now that the sun approached the horizon, the night was softening, warm but not harsh. June bugs flicked on and off around the yard. At the tops of the trees, leaves rustled slightly.
They swayed together for some time, not speaking.
“Do you want to talk about your Mom, and everything?” Matt asked eventually, stroking her hair. “You’ve been pretty stressed out lately.”
“I know. I guess I should be handling this stuff better. She just...irritates me so much. She’s tired and cranky all the time, and sometimes she cries for no reason. She can’t seem to concentrate on anything, even if I’ve told her something a dozen times...” Julie sighed. “I guess it’s all the hormones. That’s what she says, anyway.”
Matt twisted his fingers through Julie’s hair and brought it in a cascade down one side of her neck so he could kiss the opposite cheek.
“Yeah, it’s probably that. And, maybe, missing your dad, too.” He rested his head on the cushion. “You miss him, I can tell.”
“I just miss things being like they were,” she replied. “Now they’ll never be normal again.”
Matt smiled and wrapped his arms across Julie’s chest, pulling her close.
“I don’t think anyone can count on things being ‘normal’ for very long, Jules,” he said. “I’m not sure my life has ever been what you’d call ‘normal.’” He let out a deep breath. “Guess that means I’ve never been ‘normal’, either.”
“It’s funny you should say that, about being normal,” said Julie, hugging his arms with hers. “I was just saying to my mom...” She stopped herself. “Well, just yelling at her, actually...that I want to be normal, like other girls, just go to school, do my own thing, be with people I like...” She squeezed one of his hands. “Is that too much to ask?”
Matt didn’t immediately answer. They listened to crickets saw away in the long grass next to the back fence. The sun had now set, and the sky was darkening. The swinging of the hammock was almost imperceptible now.
“I think we’re as normal as we need to be,” he finally replied. “If we lived in some kind of alternate universe, you know, where your dad wasn’t a football coach, and I wasn’t QB1, and you weren’t...you...” He closed his eyes and shook the thought from his mind. “I don’t know how we would’ve met, or why you’d have gone out with me. ‘Cause I’m not sure you would have.”
“Give me a little credit!” retorted Julie, digging him in the ribs with one elbow. “I know a good thing when I see it.”
“Ow!” He flinched, prepared for another attack, and when it didn’t come, he relaxed back into the hammock’s embrace, Julie now turned to one side, cupping him with her curves.
“Why do you think we wouldn’t have gotten together?” she asked, her head on his chest.
“Well...maybe I wouldn’t be living in Dillon, for one thing,” he replied. She both heard and felt the words as he spoke them, her ear to his chest. The resonance of his voice made her want to crawl inside his shirt and stay there forever.
“Where would you be living?” she asked.
Matt’s hand moved up around her back and came to rest on the fullness of her hip.
“Probably...in Oklahoma. Where my folks met.” He tucked his fingers into her waistband, looking for the hollow next to her hipbone.
Julie sighed contentedly. These full-body contact chats were rare indulgences. They usually were on the move during their dates, going to movies, to parties, shuttling from place to place. They were never able to spend much time in each other’s rooms while their family members were home, or awake. This hammock might just become their favorite new retreat.
“Oklahoma? That’s where your mom lives, right?” Julie shifted so that Matt’s hand slipped a little lower, his fingertips now touching the edge of her panties.
“Yeah. Probably.” He stroked her belly idly. She tried to encourage him further, but he seemed not to be focused on sex just then. They were silent for a minute or two.
“Jules,” he said eventually, breathing into her hair.
“Yeah?” He head was tucked up under his chin.
“My mom is coming. She’s coming to Dillon. For a visit.” He said it so quietly, it was almost a whisper.
Somehow Julie knew not to respond with too much enthusiasm.
“That’s...I’m so glad. You...you must be...excited.”
He withdrew his hand from her jeans and traced it across her belly and around her waist, resting it there.
“Smash put me up to it. To inviting her. She hasn’t been here in a while, and we haven’t seen each other...well...it’s been too long.” He paused. “I think.”
Julie heard the uncertainty in his voice. “You think? How long has it been?”
He sighed. “Like...three years. She came in the summer last time, too. She didn’t stay long. I think it’s better when she doesn’t stay long.”
“Do...is...is it hard? To get along with her, or something?” Julie wasn’t sure how much to press him for details. But he did bring this subject up in the first place.
“Um...it’s...kinda complicated...” he said, seeming unsure if he wanted to proceed.
Julie laughed gently. “It’s always complicated. You can tell me about it. If you want.”
The sky was taking on the qualities of night now, only the horizon still glowing warm orange and red as the canopy of stars brightened above them. It felt as if time had been suspended, that their responsibilities and obligations had been quietly tabled for now, the only imperative that they be there together. To talk.
Matt sighed and seemed to settle himself.
“There’s a lot to tell. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“I’ve only been waiting, like, forever, for you to tell me about her. About them. All of it.”
“Alright then.” He took a deep breath.
“The Saracen Story.” Julie put her ear to his chest, listening and feeling him as he spoke.
“My dad grew up on a farm, outside Tulsa. There were a lot of kids in his family. I think he was number six or seven, one of the last. His older brothers, my uncles,, took over the farm from my granddad and ran it, so there wasn’t any place for him there once he got out of high school. So he joined up. Joined the Army. When he’d been enlisted for a couple of years, he went to visit my aunt Peg during his leave, and he met my mom. She was a friend of my aunt’s.”
Julie shifted slightly.
“What’s her name? Your mom’s name?”
The deep rumble of Matt’s sigh told Julie more than any words.
“Callie. Well, that’s what my dad calls her. Her real name is Calliope.”
Julie sat up with delight.
“Calliope? That’s awesome! She was one of the muses, right?”
He smiled. “The muse of epic poetry. How many times did I hear her explain that when I was a kid.”
“How did she get a name like that?”
Matt bent one knee and leaned in towards Julie a little more closely.
“Her dad. He was kinda...unusual. He was a salesman, but he was really a frustrated actor. He was always getting parts in local community shows and stuff. He and my mom, they traveled around all the time. My mom’s mom hated that life, so she stayed put one time and my mom and granddad just kept going. I think my mom told me once that she went to fifteen different schools before she dropped out.”
“Why didn’t she stay with her mom?”
“I guess because her dad was..what does she call him? Oh yeah...’charismatic.’ He was a charismatic kinda guy. But it was hard, too. By the time she met my dad, she was pretty sick of changing towns all the time. I think that’s why she and my dad got together. The opposites attract thing.”
Julie mulled this over. “Do you think we’re opposites?”
Matt considered the question.
“Not...not like they are. They...fought. A lot. My mom thought that the Army would be a stable life for them, but my dad was gone most of the time, and my mom didn’t really fit in on base with the other wives. She wanted to, but she was different. She had a lot of my granddad in her.” He paused for a moment. “She’s really sweet, and she can just kinda do everything she puts her mind to, cooking, sewing, singing, painting...” His voice trailed off.
“She sounds really artistic. Like you.” Julie hugged him.
“There’s nothing she can’t do. She’s so talented. It’s just that...” He paused. “None of it makes her happy.”
“Is..is that why they split up?”
“It was a lot of things. I just think they gave up trying to understand each other, after a while. He was frustrated with her, because she never stuck with anythng very long, and she thought the Army had turned him into a ‘tin soldier,’ with no heart, no feelings. That’s what she used to call him...’the tin soldier, our country’s finest.’”
Matt didn’t speak for a moment.
“They were unhappy. It’s better that they split up. That’s when I came to Dillon. Good thing, too, wasn’t it?” He kissed her forehead.
“But...your mom didn’t want you to stay with her?”
Matt shifted positions. Julie could tell the end of this conversation was near.
“She...she had trouble keeping jobs. It was just easier on everybody that I came here.”
It was enough. Julie could have asked questions long into the night, but this was the crux of the story. She knew there would be more. And hopefully, she’d meet Callie/Calliope and draw her own conclusions.
Matt’s leg was falling asleep under Julie’s hips, so he tried to edge her off but ended up poking her in the low back. She nudged him in return, and he responded by starting to tickle her. They feinted and parried each other’s attacks, going for each other’s ribs, or bellies, or just under the chin. The hammock returned to a rollicking elliptical shimmey beneath them. As they were getting more tangled up in each other, Julie turned onto her stomach and started to kiss him, her body pressed into his, her hair tangled in his fingers and draped over his face.
Suddenly, the hammock lurched to one side, and they flipped over the edge onto the ground. Their surprised grunts gave way to full-on belly laughs as they rolled together in the dusty earth.
They waited until Grandma was asleep in front of the TV before they snuck into the bathroom together. They stripped off their smudged clothes into a pile on the floor and stood under the weak pressure of the shower, rinsing each other clean.
***
After she made sure the kids were in bed and asleep, Pam changed into her nightgown and made her way to the downstairs office, where she reconvened her private research session into her daughter’s disappearance. It had become a kind of guilty ritual, always done either in the dark late at night or when she was alone in the house. It was like any habit that starts innocently enough: just an idle way to pass the time, perhaps to amuse or inform. Then it begins to dominate your free time, either directly by taking up hours online, or preoccupying your thoughts when you aren’t in front of the computer. Pam didn’t want to go out anymore. She wanted to stay in.
Lyla had her own computer in her room, but Pam couldn’t bring herself to sit at her desk, surrounded by the various reminders of her daughter’s life. Lyla had taken down all her Panther memorabilia, her personal photos and mementos, the trophies and banners and buttons. All of it had been shoved in a box before Christmas and put out a the curb for trash pick-up. Pam had rescued it and hid it away in a storage container attached to the ceiling of the garage. Lyla wouldn’t need to know it was still around until the day she decided she wanted to have it back.
The first entries on the blog dated from March. They were short, curt, somewhat tentative. Pam read the first few without gaining the least insight. Except for one thing. Lyla might have busied herself with saying very little. But she was saying something. Even the one-sentence posts practically leapt off the screen, they were so laden with frustration.
03/11/07
so. it’s come to this. i feel the need to write a blog. what’s happening to me??
03/12/07
i’ve been writing a blog for a class at school, and it doesn’t seem as much of a waste of time as I’d expected. but I don’t feel like I can say much on it. anything, everything could get out, even though we don’t have to share our posts with the rest of the class. i like the teacher, but you just never know. so I’m going to write here instead. it might be interesting, to see what comes out. or doesn’t. still not sure who’s going to read this, because I’m not telling anybody in RL about it. what strangers would want to read about me? what would they say? but that’s the point, I guess...strangers couldn’t say worse things than my friends have. if I have any friends left. T
that’s a good question. do I have any friends?
03/13/07
friday the thirteenth. going over to my dad’s place tonight. “weekend visitation.” sounds like I should be meeting up with an angel instead of the devil incarnate. how appropriate.
03/15/07
what’s that song...”you think you know me..” or something...
hold on, time for Google...
here it is:
You give your hand to me
And then you say, "Hello."
And I can hardly speak,
My heart is beating so.
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well.
Well, you don't know me.
No you don't know the one
Who dreams of you at night;
And longs to kiss your lips
And longs to hold you tight
Oh I'm just a friend.
That's all I've ever been.
‘Cause you don't know me.
yeah, that about sums me up.
***
Tim was on his way home from his summer job late one Friday afternoon when he took a detour to the Street’s house. He was working for a paper products distributor out of Midland, assigned as the second man on two-man teams that delivered paper towels, toilet paper, napkins, and paper plates to the various megamarts around the district. Tim provided the muscle, while the other men drove the truck and handled the paperwork. There wasn’t much to the job, and not much need to talk about anything while he was working, or afterwards, which suited him just fine. He opened a checking account with the proceeds from his first paycheck, though a good portion of each check was spoken for every week. Billy saw to that.
He and Jason had spent most weekends in each other’s company that spring and had reestablished their rapport, though some of their summer activities had changed since the days of waterskiing and football camp. These days, it was more likely they’d get a bite to eat, hit a party, and go sit out at the lake on the dock and just be. It was enough.
But Tim was feeling expansive that night, having cashed his check this week instead of handing it straight over to Billy, feeling the wad of bills press hard against his hip while occupying his back pocket. He told himself he’d give Billy his share of the “rent” the next day, after he and Jason selected their evening’s activities. Tim had a few ideas in mind.
At the Street’s house, Jason’s parents weren’t home yet from work, but Jason was there, having just finished leading conditioning drills at football camp. Still the low man on the totem pole in the Panther coaching hierarchy, he was tasked with all the least-desirable jobs. His assigned players were all the freshman and JV backs, some so small that Jason had to ignore his concerns about playing them against the larger kids. This was football. If you’re here, you play. Even if an injury could...evenif it seemed reckless, to make growing boys throw their bodies and brains at stationary targets, especially each other.
But the harder part was the psychological effect of being around young kids who weren’t quite sure what to make of him. There were a few new recruits who had just moved into Dillon’s jurisdiction who only had vague ideas about who Jason was, or had been, and he could see them at times, casting sideways glances at him, trying to evaluate what kind of coach he could be when he couldn’t even stand up. The other kids were respectful, but they didn’t revere him as they once had, when his future was the one they would tie their own dreams to and hope to somehow, possibly emulate.
He wasn’t that Jason Street anymore. Which Jason Street he was now, he still couldn’t be sure.
At least Tim was one source of continuity from ‘BTA’: Before the Accident. Lyla had stopped even acknowledging him when they bumped into each other, and he avoided Buddy at all costs, though it was harder to keep his distance when Buddy was lurking around the fieldhouse, opining on every issue and finding ways to intimidate and ingratiate all at the same time. Jason knew he needed a new crowd, a crowd that would see him as he was now, not as he had been or might have been. How to find that new social circle was more uncharted territory.
At least he and Tim could drop in on each other and be together wherever, whenever, and however they liked. Which was the reason Tim could show up unannounced on Jason’s doorstep with a plan in mind, and it was as if Jason had thought it up himself.
“Steaks, baked potatoes, and brew. What do you say?” Tim held up the wad of cash. “We could go to the Landing Strip, check out the entertainment, have an excellent meal...” Tim nodded his head encouragingly. “It’s been too long, Street. You need to re-engage the mojo, and I’m here to provide the means.”
Jason smiled. “That does sound excellent...” He wheeled himself to the kitchen and got a case of beer out of the pantry. “But why don’t we save some of that cash and just cook over at your place, then go out? I don’t really like to mix my media, if you know what I mean.”
Tim tucked the money back in his pocket and held open the front door.
“You always did have a big brain on you, man. Let’s do it.”
A short time later, steaks and potatoes secured from the market, they made their way back to the Riggins Estate. Billy was home, as he had been all day. He was bartending at a local dive now while he waited for another sales job to come through. It was probably not the best place for him to be working.
He was on the couch with chips and beer close at hand, flipping through channels when the boys showed up.
“Gentlemen. Making a pit stop before heading out tonight?” He drained his beer and skipped it off the coffeetable into a basket that was already full of other cans. “You know I keep tellin’ you to come by the bar while I’m working so’s I can set you up cheap. You just pass me a little green, and I’ll keep the drinks flowin’.”
Tim put the grocery bag on the kitchen counter and turned on the broiler. Technically, they had a grill, but it hadn’t been used since their dad had been home. None of them was patient enough to wait for the charcoal to get to the right temperature. They also enjoyed the smell of sizzling meat that permeated the house for a day or two after they used the broiler. It was almost like having leftovers on hand, which virtually never happened.
“Yeah, we’ll keep that in mind,” Tim replied, taking out three potatoes and poking holes in them with a fork. These would go in the microwave, a cast off from a neighbor down the street who put it out in their trash one day. The keypad didn’t work any longer, but the cooking elements were fine. The Riggins brothers had become accustomed to punching various buttons to get it to start and kept punching them until the food in question was adequately cooked. They considered it a reasonable exchange for a free appliance.
Tim put the first potato on the carousel and hit a couple of keys. The microwave beeped and started cooking.
“So Jason...” continued Billy, another beer in hand. “How’s that gig of yours going now that you’ve been at it a while? Still keeping body and soul together?”
In a million years, it would never have occured to Jason that coaching the Panthers was just a means to an end, as Billy suggested. But oddly, that description seemed entirely...apt.
“Good, it’s good. You know, for now. For a guy like me, just out of school, and...
“...still in a chair,” Billy said, finishing Jason’s sentence.
He was facing the TV, or he’d have noticed Jason’s shocked expression and Tim’s eyes narrowing in anger.
“Billy...what the fuck, man...”
Jason waved him off. “Stop, it’s OK...”
Billy heard the tension in Jason’s voice and turned to look at him.
“Hey, I didn’t mean, I wasn’t saying that you’re...that it’s...” he fumbled through several iterations of an apology but came up with nothing. “I just wanted to know if you’re...uh...doing OK.”
“Real articulate, bro,” scoffed Tim, cracking open a beer and drinking down most of it in one swallow. “Sounded even worse than me.”
“Naw, it’s...I’m fine,” replied Jason quietly. “It’s a reasonable question...given what happened, am I OK with what I’m doing now?” He sat back in his chair. “I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest.”
Billy rose from his seat and came into the kitchen. “Baked potatoes and steaks? Did you get some for me?” He began rooting around in the paper bag from the market. “I guess I just wondered, y’know, if you’d still want this job if you weren’t in a chair.” He opened the oven and returned the broiler pan, with three steaks set out on it, to the oven.
Jason replied, trying to keep his voice even, “I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life nine months ago. I thought I wanted to play college ball, then pro ball, that whole thing, that whole path. For as long as possible and as well as possible. It’s true, I didn’t think about coaching. But that’s because coaching was so far down the road, decades, maybe, if I was lucky.” He wheeled himself to the counter and took a beer out of the case. “Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have thought about it.”
“But it does mean,” remarked Billy, taking a potato out of the microwave and putting another in its place. “...that you’re doing something you never planned to do. So...that’s what I’m asking. Is it working out, even though you didn’t plan it?”
“What else should he do, Billy?” thundered Tim, pushing his brother out of the kitchen. “Any bright ideas, Mr. Bartender This Week, Salesman Next Week? You’re a pretty bad example of planning, I’d say.”
“Yeah? You know what? You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Billy began to pace in front of the TV.
“My whole LIFE has been about not having a plan, ‘cause I wasn’t ALLOWED to have my own plan. I was gonna play golf, then 9-11 happened. Then Dad left. Then you turned out to be...you...” He returned to the couch, picked up his beer, and made his way to the front door. “This is EXACTLY why I’m askin’ these questions, Jason...’cause it’s just too damn easy to end up like me.” He picked up his keys from the coffee table and opened the front door.
“What’s that called...yeah, that’s it...” He took a last swig of his beer and flicked the can towards the kitchen. “I’m a goddamn cautionary tale. You enjoy your dinner, boys, ‘cause a steak and a few beers might be all you get to look forward to from now on.”
***
4/20/07
so. my mother. what can i say about her that won’t sound like i’m just a raving bitch? she married my dad. she was young. big mistake. huge, actually. because my dad is a serial adulterer. secretaries seem to be his thing. strippers too, but i don’t even want to know if they were ever his girlfriends. but i guess money was changing hands no matter where he met these women. the last one, the one who is the mother of this girl i know, she got a job with him. and then, she did what i guess all the others didn’t have the guts to do...she outed him. at church. in front of me, my mom, pretty much everybody in town who cared. well. they may not have ‘cared,’ but they found it interesting to ‘know.’
i took my mom’s side, because how could i not, but now? now i wonder if maybe she’s worse than my dad. i guess he’s always been like this, been a cheater and liar and a scumbag. so the question is...why would my beautiful, sweet mother stay with him? because of me and my brother and sister? is that all she thought she could do? should she have walked away when we were younger? would it have been easier then?
maybe if she had, we would’ve been messed up for a while, but we would’ve found a new way. now? now I don’t know if i can ever look my mother in the eye again.
***
The next weekend, Tami was on her way back to her car after doing some shopping at the strip mall close to her house when she caught a glimpse of a woman slumped on a bench outside the hair salon. It was midday on a Saturday, the parking lot and stores busy with patrons, but no one seemed to notice the woman. Tami thought she looked familiar and went to take a closer look.
It was Pam Garrity.
Tami approached her carefully. Pam’s head rested in the crook of one arm, which she had propped up on the back of the bench. Her body language was lax, her knees falling open and her other hand idly draped across her lap. Tami wasn’t sure if she was asleep, sick, or just exhausted.
Tami heard her sigh and knew, at least, that she was awake. She sat down next to her.
“Pam?” She put her hand on her arm. “Are you OK? It’s Tami Taylor.”
Pam looked over at her, then turned away again.
“Oh, Tami. Have...have you been sitting there long? I’m a little out of it today.” She raised her hand to look at her watch. “Is that the time? I need to see if the kids are done with their haircuts. I thought I’d just step outside for a minute, and look what happens...” She seemed ready to rise from the bench but instead settled back again.
Tami moved a little closer.
“How...how are you doing, these days? Any...any news?”
Pam stared straight ahead.
“I can’t sleep anymore,” she said, drained of any expression whatsoever. “I’m not hungry, I’m not thirsty, I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to talk to people. I don’t want people to talk to me.” She stopped herself, realizing what she’d just said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded...” She actually tried to make eye contact with Tami but broke off the attempt almost immediately, returning to staring stonily into space.
“I know y’all mean well, everyone’s been so kind...” She tipped her head to one side. “I just don’t have anything to say anymore. There’s just nothing to say.”
Tami put her hand on Pam’s arm, very lightly.
“We’re all thinking about you, and about Lyla. You know we’re praying for the best.”
“I know you are. I know you mean well.”
Tami could tell this was only Pam’s politeness speaking. She decided it might be best to leave her to herself.
“Well, I just wanted to say hello...”
Just then, Pam turned and looked at Tami for the first time.
“I think I might have driven her away.”
Tami wasn’t sure how to respond.
“What...I’m not sure I know what you mean...?”
“She had a blog. Lyla. Do you know what a blog is?” Pam turned away again. “I didn’t. But now I’m very familiar with it. She wrote about all kinds of things we never talked about. I’ve been reading it. I’ve read it all, over and over again. It seems like the only thing I can do now. I read it every day. I keep looking for clues, ideas about where she might be, who she might be with...” She stopped again.
“Well, that’s part of it. I really read it because she writes about me. Not...not good things.” She put one hand to her face and covered her eyes.
“And you know what, Tami? She’s not wrong. She’s not wrong. I was a terrible example to her. Our marriage was a terrible example. I told myself I was doing the right thing, giving my children a secure home, a promising future...but I sold out. I never thought I was a sell-out, but now I know I am. And my daughter had to be the one who showed me that.”
Tami tried to respond soothingly. “Teens say so many things in the heat of the moment. Julie has said some terrible things to me lately, and I try to be patient, try to acknowledge how things are a little hard on her these days too...”
“So you know what I mean, then. We think we’re making the best choice, to make things happy and comfortable for our kids, when all the ugliness is right there below the surface, and we don’t acknowledge it, we don’t try to change it...and then something happens, something like this...” Her voice caught. “And it’s over. Your chance is over.”
“It’s not over. Don’t say that, Pam. You can’t give up now. NOW is the time Lyla needs you the most. If you were ever strong for your children, now is the time. I don’t like having Eric in Austin while I’m going through this pregnancy, and I know Julie misses him so much, but we’ll get through this, like you’ll get through this...”
“So that’s what really hurts now,” said Pam, as if she’d not heard a word Tami said. “She’s gone, maybe even dead, and it all happened at a time when she had no respect for me, at all.”
Pam’s expression was flat, her eyes dull.
“And the thing is...she’s right. I thought we were close. I thought we were so alike. But I don’t want her to have a life like mine. I know that now. I wish...I need her to know that. I just...she...that’s not how I want this to end for us. It can’t end this way.”
Tami squeezed her arm but said nothing. There was no way to assure Pam that things would, in fact, end differently.
Pam seemed to gather herself, returning to a more engaged demeanor. The return to being a good Dillon Wife...like those Stepford Wives of movie fame. But without the tony zip code.
She picked up her purse and smoothed her skirt.
“I’m sorry, Tami, I didn’t mean to go on like that. I have to run now. You have a good weekend. Bye-bye!”
***
4/25/07
is there ANYONE in my hometown who isn’t a complete and utter hypocrite??
including me?
Author: vacheqirit
Rating: R for language
Spoilers: Six months post-"State"
Disclaimers: FNL and these characters are the properties of their owners. No infringements intended.
Author's Note: I guess I've committed to riding this wave. Please offer your feedback so it can be a fun ride for all.
You know you've got my hands,
and you've got your father's eyes -
lovely, bold eyes
I know that it's not fair, but things aren't always what they
seem - and now I worry so -
Where you'll lay your head, where you'll sleep tonight,
Way up high, why, oh why can't I
Someone's pillow's cold, someone loved you so.
Where's the heart in me that made the one in you so cold,
Please don't go.
'Cause I know where you got that dress, I know where you
learned to walk like that
'Cause you were so much, so much mine
now I reach for you
and I cannot find you
So much, so much mine
now I reach for you and I cannot find you.
Jonatha Brooke and The Story, So Much Mine
***
Pam Garrity was alone that Saturday night. The kids were with Buddy for their twice-a-month weekend visitation. There had been no word from Lyla, no further developments in her diappearance. The police were still calling it a missing person’s case, but the longer she was gone, the less likely it would be that she’d be found. Pam wasn’t sleeping much anymore, her mind wandering down every ugly path that this ugly situation had cast before her, every day crowded with thoughts too terrifying to look at squarely but too insistent to be put in deep storage, much as she wished she could.
But she could not.
Nor could she speak about the horror of this uncertainty with anyone without the frustration of it choking her. She listened to her friends’ worried voices, heard their attempts at comforting words as if through whirlwind, and dismissed them all as soon as she could reasonably extricate herself from their company. She spent much of her time alone, trying to dig into her daughter’s psyche based on the cascade of events that had defined the past year: Jason’s injury, that self-destructive fling with Riggins and the very public scorn heaped on her afterwards, the engagement and break-up, Buddy and his...ways. And all this in addition to being a graduating senior with so much to anticipate in a matter of months...her presumptive escape to college and a new life. Why now? Why would this happen now?
She went round in circles, she knew, never making any particular progress. But she persisted in trying to tease skeins of sense out of a senseless situation. But she was also avoiding something, something that could possibly offer clues, even answers, as to Lyla’s whereabouts. Pam wasn’t sure she wanted to see what was there, to have Lyla’s thoughts and feelings so baldly articulated for anyone to see. And the probable withering, scathing rebukes that she may have laid on Pam and Buddy. It was worse, even, than contemplating reading any diary her daughter might have kept.
Because this so-called ‘blog’ of hers...it was public. Strangers and friends alike, all invited to the slam. She desperately hoped that her other children would never see it. Did they know Lyla’s screenname? Did they know the web address? Pam had kept the address tucked in a fake book in the office, one that looked like all the other hardcovers up on a top shelf but was hollow. She kept extra money there, the keys to the safe deposit box at the bank, the deed to a piece of property her father had left her that Buddy didn’t know about.
The biggest secret, somehow, was that piece of paper with Lyla’s blog address.
She’s been gone about two weeks now. There was no point in pretending that this situation was short-term any longer. It was going to take a while to find her. And the longer it took, the harder it would be for life to approximate anything but a nightmare.
So it was time. The children were gone for the weekend. She couldn’t concentrate on much of anything, not TV, not reading, certainly not her scrapbooking. There hadn’t been an event worth commemorating in months. She’d planned on doing a whole separate book for Lyla’s graduation, but that had been tabled. Indefinitely.
The house was empty, the computer glowing in its place on the office desk. There would be no better time.
It was time.
Pam sat down at the computer and typed in, “soouttahere.blogspot.com.”
She began at the beginning, with Lyla’s first entry.
***
It was another weekend without Coach in town. Tami had extricated a promise from Julie that they would have dinner together that night and stay in for Girls’ Night, an arcane Taylor tradition that had fallen into disuse since Matt had started to have dibs on Julie’s free time. Tami was routinely tired, uncomfortable, and very, very lonely without Eric. Julie was only somewhat sympathetic.
“Yeah, well, I miss him too, Mom, and I don’t mope around like you do,” she remarked as they cleaned up their spaghetti dinner. “It’s sort of annoying.”
“So, how would you be, if Matt were in Austin most of the time, and you missed him?” Tami took a large spoon out of the cutlery drawer and put it to work scooping out bounteous servings of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Haagen Dazs. No skimping on calories or cost tonight.
Julie considered the question.
“I’d get him to come visit. Or I’d go there.”
Tami licked the spoon and dropped it into her bowl with a clatter. Might as well use it and not dirty another. Teaspoon-sized implements weren’t really up to the task at hand anyway.
“Sounds easy. But it isn’t. Your dad’s got weekend commitments, and so do you, and so do I, for that matter.” She walked over to the couch and sat down. “Not to mention that little detail of...I’M VERY PREGNANT.” She let out a long,, exasperated sigh.
“Right. Always the pregnancy thing,” scoffed Julie. “That’s such a great excuse. I’ll tuck that nugget away to use when the time is right.”
“Which will be be years and years from now,” her mother added.
“I wish you didn’t need to use it, either.” Julie brought her bowl to the couch as well.
“Well, I’m sorry, Jules, but you’ll just have to trust me on this...pregnancy is tough. Especially at my age.”
“Sure. It’s tough. It’s inconvenient. It’s expensive. So remind me why you’re bothering to do it?” She couldn’t help the snark leak into her voice.
Her mother put down her spoon.
“What?”
Julie looked away. “It...I don’t understand. Why you’d want to do this now. I never...I just never, ever thought about having a sister, or a brother, or...anything.” Julie looked at her shoes.
“Well, we always wanted to have another baby, honey, but it just didn’t happen and it just didn’t happen, and then...it did. We didn’t plan for it.” Tami tried to stroke Julie’s hair, but she turned her face away.
“Yeah, but...you didn’t plan NOT to have one, either.” She stood up.
Tami found herself taken off guard by this riposte.
“Honey...that’s...that’s really not an appropriate comment.”
“Why not?” snapped Julie. “It’s ‘appropriate’ for you to tell me how I’m too young to have sex, and have I thought about consequences and diseases and pregnancy and all that...” She sat up in her seat. “So why can’t I comment on your apparent carelessness when it comes to birth control?”
“It’s not the same thing. Your father and I are committed to each other, we’ve been married for twenty years, and if a baby happened to come along again, which she has, we’d be happy and ready for it. That’s just not the situation you and Matt are in.”
“Don’t bring him into this. This is about you and me and Dad.” Julie was still running hot.
“Sweetheart, this is a gift. This baby is an amazing gift. At my age, there are no guarantees that you can get pregnant, or have a healthy baby, or a good pregnancy, but everything is going so well, we are blessed...”
“Don’t use that ‘blessed’ thing to describe this! Dad isn’t here, you’re tired and like, crazy all the time, nothing about this is good. And when it gets here...”
“When she gets here, Julie. We should start to use the right words for her. She’s real, she’s going to be a baby, a new person...”
“Stop! She’s...it’s...just a lot of cells and mucous, and...and...whatever,” fussed Julie. “Can’t things ever just be normal around here for, like, even a few days? I swear, we’re just, like, Disaster-Central, whatever.”
“Don’t use that kind of language, all that Teen Speak,” Tami retorted. “That’s not how you talk, Julie, as if you were some bubbleheaded...”
“’Bubbleheaded...’ what, Mom? Cheerleader? Rally girl? Yeah, I’m not, and I know they’re what pass for ‘normal’ around here...but Newsflash!...I AM a teen! I AM like other girls, especially other girls who have lame-ass excuses for parents, ones that can’t make up their minds about how to handle priorities like new jobs and their daughter’s happiness, who can’t get it together enough to know when they should be done with procreating...”
“That’s enough. No insults. We’re above that.”
“You know, I really thought it was everyone else around here who’s delusional, but come to find out, it’s actually MY family that’s completely divorced from reality. That’s...that’s it. That’s exactly it. It’s like you guys have gotten divorced but haven’t even figured out how to do that right. We’re just stuck in this limbo, waiting for the Beast to arrive to make everything shiny and happy again..”
Tami tried to interrupt but Julie was on a tear.
“So I’m just gonna go over to my boyfriend’s now, because his parents aren’t around to screw him up and his grandma loves us and leaves us alone...so maybe I can be a NORMAL teenager, maybe hang out, listen to music, maybe have sex if I feel like it...” She grabbed her purse from the kitchen counter and headed towards the front door. “That’s what’s really normal, Mom, in case you weren’t quite sure. Maybe I should give you some tutorials so that when the kids at school come to you next fall you have some kind of basis for giving them advice.”
“Don’t you leave, Julie...Julie...” Tami called after her.
Julie came back around the corner of the kitchen to grab her mother’s car keys off the counter. “Oh, and while we’re on the subject, I don’t think the principle and the other parents would be too happy to hear that you think their precious little girls are a bunch of bubbleheaded twots.”
Tami wasn’t exactly sure what a ‘twot’ was, but somehow she knew it was very, very bad.
“Are you done now? Julie? Get...get...” Tami scraped herself off the couch just in time to hear the front door slam.
Girls Night. Perhaps never to return to its regular spot in the weekend rotation.
***
That night was also a significant evening for Landry. Tyra had agreed to let him accompany her to a party at a friend of a friend’s house. Tyra didn’t know the girl who was hosting, but that was part of the appeal. She hoped it would be a new crowd, with minimal numbers of Panthers, ex-Panthers, their girlfriends and friends and entourages. Anything for a new experience.
Landry was only too happy to provide the transportation. He had tried to get Tyra to consider dinner out before the party, but she had dismissed the notion immediately, saying she wanted to study until they left for the party.
Landry was beginning to wonder if Tyra were really as dedicated to her studies as her schedule suggested.
He arrived at her house at nine, as instructed. Tyra was waiting for him and didn’t even allow him in the door.
“Great, on time, as always. Let’s go,” she said, breezing by him on the doorstep on the way to the wagon. “It’ll take a bit to get out there, and I don’t want to get home too late.”
Landry followed her back to the wagon. She’d already taken a seat in the passenger side, or Landry would have held the door for her.
“Gettin’ up early tomorrow for church?” Landry teased. “I could give you a ride there, too, you know.” He closed the driver’s side door and turned the key in the ignition.
“I prefer to talk to God on my own terms, thanks,” Tyra replied as they pulled out on to the street.
“What, like, silently?” asked Landry.
“No, like...not at all.”
“You probably talk to him all the time, you just don’t realize you’re doing it,” said Landry matter-of-factly. “That’s all prayer is...those times when you’re stuck and need help and you tell youself you just need that one thing to happen, and everything will work out OK...” He paused. “That’s prayer.”
“Landry, I think I’d know if I were praying, OK? It’s Saturday night, we’re going to a party where we’re gonna do some underage drinking, maybe enjoy a few controlled substances, engage in fornication and other un-Godly activities...”
Landry’s eyes all but popped out of his head.
“Fornication? I’m...if we’re gonna do that, I need to make a pit stop...”
Tyra laughed.
“Kidding! Totally kidding. Well, other people might be doing some fornicating, but that’s their business.” She looked out the window as they took the on ramp to the interstate. “I’m just happy to get out of Dillon for a few hours.”
Landry took a deep breath and turned on the radio in an attempt to hide his crashing disappointment about this clarification of the night’s activities. He tried to chat about this and that, but Tyra wasn’t very responsive. Eventually, they drove in silence while Crucifictorius thrashed its way through its entire six-song repertoire on the stereo.
The ride to the party took them by several towns, each no different than the last. Landry wondered why getting out of Dillon seemed so important to Tyra when their destination was likely just a carbon copy of their home town.
It was close to ten by the time they arrived. The party was in full swing. No one noticed them as they made their way through the front door. Landry had considered trying to find the hostess, a girl named Lindsay, but there didn’t seem to be much point. No one cared if they were quasi-crashing or not.
Tyra found the keg in short order and filled a cup for herself, then held it out to Landry.
“Are you drinking tonight? I’m never sure with you.”
He took the cup.
“One won’t hurt. I should be fine to drive home.”
“You better be, ‘cause I’m planning on taking full advantage of the open bar tonight,” said Tyra, plying another cup with suds. “Now don’t stick to me like lint all night. Go mingle. We’ll catch up with each other later.”
“But we came together...” Landry protested.
“Landry, c’mon...even if you go to a party with your boyfriend, or, girlfriend, you always do your own thing. Then later you can compare notes, see who said what about whom, all that. It’s the only way to go.” She moved off into the room, not waiting for him to follow.
“Well, OK. If...if that’s how boyfriends and girlfriends do it,” he replied, mostly to himself.
Time passed. Tyra got her share of admiring looks from various guys, but it took some time for one to approach her.
“Man, talk about ‘Beauty and the Geek,’” said a taller, older-looking guy as he sidled up to her, indicating Landry with a nod of his head. Landry was on the other side of the room, half-listening to the girl talking next to him as he kept an eye on Tyra. Landry saw her regarding him and tipped his cup to her.
“Yeah, well...he’s just my ride,” Tyra replied, turning away. “Geeks are good for that kind of thing.”
“Really,” said the guy, turning with her to look out the window. “So for the rest of us...”
“Who aren’t geeks?” said Tyra, smiling slightly.
“...who aren’t geeks...” agreed the guy. “What do you think we might be good for?”
“I have some notions,” Tyra teased. “Care to tell me if I’m right or not?”
“Surely. Why don’t we just step into my office over there...” He inclined his head towards a back hall which no doubt led to the bedrooms. They were just starting to move in that direction when Landry appeared at Tyra’s side.
“Hey, need me to top up your beer?” he asked, smiling at her.
Tyra pursed her lips and looked into her cup. She glanced at the guy and they shared a knowing look.
“You know what, Landry, I could use something with a little more kick now.” She held out her cup. “Think you could go mix me up a cosmopolitan?”
Landry blinked. “A...what?”
Tyra shook the cup at him. “You know, what they drank on ‘Sex and the City.’ It’s got a bunch of different stuff in it...cranberry juice, vodka, lime juice...something else, I think...”
“Triple sec,” added the guy. He suppressed a smile. No way that would be stocked in this house.
“Yeah, that’s it. Think you can whip up one of those for me, Lando?” Tyra all but batted her eyes at him.
“Uh, I don’t...I’m not sure I know...” Landry was obviously at a loss as to how to proceed.
The guy took him by the shoulder and steered him towards the kitchen bar. “Go check out what they’ve got, and if you need anything, there’s a Quik Mart a couple miles down the road, at the intersection with 514.” He made his way back to Tyra. “We’ll just be over here while you get all that worked out.”
Landry stood looking at them.
“Thanks, Landry. You’re the best.” Tyra delivered the killer line with the brightest of smiles, then moved off with her companion towards the back of the house.
Landry immediately recognized this fool’s errand for what it was: a blatant dismissal, and worse, an rejection so final that he considered leaving the party that very second and let Tyra work out the details of getting home. He retreated to a far corner and fumed, willing himself not to show how she had cut him to the quick and left him to bleed while she did...who knows what, with who knows whom...
After a reasonable interval that would suggest he’d been socializing or attempting to have a good time after this exchange, he went looking for Tyra.
She and the unnamed guy were making out in the dimly-lit back hall. All the bedroom doors were closed, suggesting they may have missed out on snagging a more private space. Landry approached them.
“Hey Tyra, it’s getting late, time for me to hit the road,” he said, too brightly. “Are you still needing a ride, or can you get one...” He cleared his throat. “....or can you find another way home?”
Tyra disengaged from the guy and gave Landry the dirtiest of looks.
“Now? We need to go now?”
Landry brought his full-on Geek Mode, just to mess with her head.
“Well, sure, it’s past midnight, and you know I have to be at Sunday School early tomorrow. We’re having a guest speaker who’s been in Micronesia on a mission this past year. I wouldn’t want to be too tired to enjoy that.”
Tyra’s eyes widened, and she choked out an answer.
“Well, since you put it that way...” She tucked her hair behind one ear and looked up at the guy.
“Another time, perhaps?” she said, picking up her purse from the floor. “I’m in the book. Collette...C-O-L...”
Landry took her by the elbow and directed her down the hall.
“Got to run, Tyra, or the chariot’s gonna turn into a pumpkin!” he said with grating cheer. “I’m sure he knows all he needs to know about you.” They sailed through the living room and were quickly out the front door. “He won’t be calling. Just in case you were wondering.”
“Like you’d know so much about it,” she snapped. “Real classy, Landry. Did you have to put on the Bible-thumper routine just to get me out of there?”
“If the shoe fits, right Tyra? Guess I can’t help myself sometimes. I just can’t help but revert to form and be the ‘good boy.’” He opened the door of the wagon, sat down and started the engine without waiting for Tyra to get settled first.
On the way home, Landry tuned the radio to a rock station and cranked up the volume, effectively eliminating any type of conversation. Tyra knew she was being reprimanded, which stung despite the fact that she’d engineered the evening to end just this way. It was time to let Landry in on the joke: that he was never going to be boyfriend material, at least, not for her. She didn’t have the courage to let him down gently. That just wasn’t her way.
But if she thought she was getting off with just an assault on her eardrums, she was mistaken.
After several screaming minutes hurtling down the interstate, Landry punched the radio off. The ensuing silence was louder than any screeching guitars.
“Why did you do that?” He glanced over to her. “Really. I want to know.”
“What? Do what?” She feigned ignorance poorly.
“Don’t...don’t do that. You know exactly what I mean. You tried to send me on a wild goose chase just so’s you could get some play with that guy. I thought I was your date, and then you diss me like that...”
“Hold up...you weren’t my ‘date,’ Landry. I said we could go together. That’s not a date.”
He shook his head. “Really. So why do think I asked you to go tonight? Because you think I get my rocks off by spending my money on gas so I can drive people like you and Matt and Julie wherever you want to go, just to have something to DO?” He floored the gas and the wagon lurched forward.
“Here’s some news for you, Tyra...I like to think I’m a good Christian. I like to help people, I try to ask myself, ‘What would Jesus do?’ in certain situations, maybe even in situations like tonight. And believe me, it’s not easy to do that. ESPECIALLY like tonight.” He stopped talking for a moment, as if considering how much more to say.
“But that’s not how I am all the time. Sometimes, I actually want things for myself, like a date with a beautiful girl who seems perfectly happy to spend time with me when she needs my help with something, or maybe, when she needs a little attention that she’s not getting from the people she wants to get attention from...” His voice trailed off as his though process grew more complicated.
“You know, you can’t play that ‘I didn’t know that’s what you meant’ shit with me anymore. You’re smart, and you know what you want, but sometimes, you don’t want to deal with things and you hide. You hid tonight. You used that guy to avoid dealing with me. I knew you weren’t into him. You just didn’t want to have me around, when people might wonder if we were...dare I say it...actually ‘together.’ So you embarrassed me and used me instead.”
Tyra was silent. She had no snappy rejoinder.
Landry continued. “Well, I guess I’ve finally gotten your message. So here’s mine: I’m done. Your safe guy is done.” He took the exit towards Dillon, barely slowing down as he did so.
“So glad I could be of service, all these nights when you needed a ride, when you needed help with your studying, when you needed somebody you could manipulate so you could feel better about yourself. It’s been a pleasure serving you.” He turned down the street towards Tyra’s house.
“I hope you’ll write me an excellent recommendation.”
***
By the time Julie made it to the Saracen’s, she was ashamed at herself for having lost it so utterly with her mother, when they were supposed to be having a girls night, one she couldn’t expect to have many more of before The Beast arrived in August. Matt hadn’t been expecting to see her that night, but when she knocked on the screen door, his smile at seeing her made her relax.
“Hey, did...did we have plans tonight, ‘cause I thought...” he began.
Julie came through the door into the living room, shaking her head.
“No, I...I just needed to take a break from Drama Central, that’s all.” She deposited herself on the couch with a bounce. “Is it OK? I should’ve called, but I had to get out of there...”
“No, no, it’s fine.” Matt let the screen door fall back into place and came to sit with her. “We’re done with dinner, Grandma said she’s gonna read a little before her show comes on in a while...”
Julie tucked her head into his shoulder and leaned into him. “Can we just...hang out...?”
Matt kissed the top of her head.
“Sure. We could go sit on the hammock. I actually dusted it off the other day.”
The heat of the day still lingered in the tiny house, the blast torch effect of sun and humidity making it hard going for the ancient window A/C units to cool the interior. But the evening was softening as the sun lowered in the sky. Outside it would be cooler.
They brought plastic cups full of ice and water out to the backyard, where the canvas hammock, stretched between its support poles, occupied the far corner of the garden, slightly hidden from the back of the cottage by a storage shed. They had never gotten into a hammock together before and it took a little coordination for them not to end up on the ground in a heap of arms and legs. They laughed at each other and tried to maintain their balance as they took their positions, Matt in back, Julie sitting between his legs. The hammock was swaying with great energy by the time they were settled.
They adjusted themselves, experimenting with positions to find the most comfortable arrangement. Matt eventually got the headrest centered just where he needed it under his neck, and Julie was well secured in his lap, her back in full contact with his torso, her head just to one side of his chin, resting on his shoulder. The hammock’s swing slowly dwindled to a gentle drifting, side to side and back again.
The canvas of the hammock was rough to the touch, both dusty and mildewed, but all hammocks seem to feel and smell like this one, so it was familiar to them both, though not a sensation they had ever shared. The heat of the day had warmed the fabric through, and now that the sun approached the horizon, the night was softening, warm but not harsh. June bugs flicked on and off around the yard. At the tops of the trees, leaves rustled slightly.
They swayed together for some time, not speaking.
“Do you want to talk about your Mom, and everything?” Matt asked eventually, stroking her hair. “You’ve been pretty stressed out lately.”
“I know. I guess I should be handling this stuff better. She just...irritates me so much. She’s tired and cranky all the time, and sometimes she cries for no reason. She can’t seem to concentrate on anything, even if I’ve told her something a dozen times...” Julie sighed. “I guess it’s all the hormones. That’s what she says, anyway.”
Matt twisted his fingers through Julie’s hair and brought it in a cascade down one side of her neck so he could kiss the opposite cheek.
“Yeah, it’s probably that. And, maybe, missing your dad, too.” He rested his head on the cushion. “You miss him, I can tell.”
“I just miss things being like they were,” she replied. “Now they’ll never be normal again.”
Matt smiled and wrapped his arms across Julie’s chest, pulling her close.
“I don’t think anyone can count on things being ‘normal’ for very long, Jules,” he said. “I’m not sure my life has ever been what you’d call ‘normal.’” He let out a deep breath. “Guess that means I’ve never been ‘normal’, either.”
“It’s funny you should say that, about being normal,” said Julie, hugging his arms with hers. “I was just saying to my mom...” She stopped herself. “Well, just yelling at her, actually...that I want to be normal, like other girls, just go to school, do my own thing, be with people I like...” She squeezed one of his hands. “Is that too much to ask?”
Matt didn’t immediately answer. They listened to crickets saw away in the long grass next to the back fence. The sun had now set, and the sky was darkening. The swinging of the hammock was almost imperceptible now.
“I think we’re as normal as we need to be,” he finally replied. “If we lived in some kind of alternate universe, you know, where your dad wasn’t a football coach, and I wasn’t QB1, and you weren’t...you...” He closed his eyes and shook the thought from his mind. “I don’t know how we would’ve met, or why you’d have gone out with me. ‘Cause I’m not sure you would have.”
“Give me a little credit!” retorted Julie, digging him in the ribs with one elbow. “I know a good thing when I see it.”
“Ow!” He flinched, prepared for another attack, and when it didn’t come, he relaxed back into the hammock’s embrace, Julie now turned to one side, cupping him with her curves.
“Why do you think we wouldn’t have gotten together?” she asked, her head on his chest.
“Well...maybe I wouldn’t be living in Dillon, for one thing,” he replied. She both heard and felt the words as he spoke them, her ear to his chest. The resonance of his voice made her want to crawl inside his shirt and stay there forever.
“Where would you be living?” she asked.
Matt’s hand moved up around her back and came to rest on the fullness of her hip.
“Probably...in Oklahoma. Where my folks met.” He tucked his fingers into her waistband, looking for the hollow next to her hipbone.
Julie sighed contentedly. These full-body contact chats were rare indulgences. They usually were on the move during their dates, going to movies, to parties, shuttling from place to place. They were never able to spend much time in each other’s rooms while their family members were home, or awake. This hammock might just become their favorite new retreat.
“Oklahoma? That’s where your mom lives, right?” Julie shifted so that Matt’s hand slipped a little lower, his fingertips now touching the edge of her panties.
“Yeah. Probably.” He stroked her belly idly. She tried to encourage him further, but he seemed not to be focused on sex just then. They were silent for a minute or two.
“Jules,” he said eventually, breathing into her hair.
“Yeah?” He head was tucked up under his chin.
“My mom is coming. She’s coming to Dillon. For a visit.” He said it so quietly, it was almost a whisper.
Somehow Julie knew not to respond with too much enthusiasm.
“That’s...I’m so glad. You...you must be...excited.”
He withdrew his hand from her jeans and traced it across her belly and around her waist, resting it there.
“Smash put me up to it. To inviting her. She hasn’t been here in a while, and we haven’t seen each other...well...it’s been too long.” He paused. “I think.”
Julie heard the uncertainty in his voice. “You think? How long has it been?”
He sighed. “Like...three years. She came in the summer last time, too. She didn’t stay long. I think it’s better when she doesn’t stay long.”
“Do...is...is it hard? To get along with her, or something?” Julie wasn’t sure how much to press him for details. But he did bring this subject up in the first place.
“Um...it’s...kinda complicated...” he said, seeming unsure if he wanted to proceed.
Julie laughed gently. “It’s always complicated. You can tell me about it. If you want.”
The sky was taking on the qualities of night now, only the horizon still glowing warm orange and red as the canopy of stars brightened above them. It felt as if time had been suspended, that their responsibilities and obligations had been quietly tabled for now, the only imperative that they be there together. To talk.
Matt sighed and seemed to settle himself.
“There’s a lot to tell. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“I’ve only been waiting, like, forever, for you to tell me about her. About them. All of it.”
“Alright then.” He took a deep breath.
“The Saracen Story.” Julie put her ear to his chest, listening and feeling him as he spoke.
“My dad grew up on a farm, outside Tulsa. There were a lot of kids in his family. I think he was number six or seven, one of the last. His older brothers, my uncles,, took over the farm from my granddad and ran it, so there wasn’t any place for him there once he got out of high school. So he joined up. Joined the Army. When he’d been enlisted for a couple of years, he went to visit my aunt Peg during his leave, and he met my mom. She was a friend of my aunt’s.”
Julie shifted slightly.
“What’s her name? Your mom’s name?”
The deep rumble of Matt’s sigh told Julie more than any words.
“Callie. Well, that’s what my dad calls her. Her real name is Calliope.”
Julie sat up with delight.
“Calliope? That’s awesome! She was one of the muses, right?”
He smiled. “The muse of epic poetry. How many times did I hear her explain that when I was a kid.”
“How did she get a name like that?”
Matt bent one knee and leaned in towards Julie a little more closely.
“Her dad. He was kinda...unusual. He was a salesman, but he was really a frustrated actor. He was always getting parts in local community shows and stuff. He and my mom, they traveled around all the time. My mom’s mom hated that life, so she stayed put one time and my mom and granddad just kept going. I think my mom told me once that she went to fifteen different schools before she dropped out.”
“Why didn’t she stay with her mom?”
“I guess because her dad was..what does she call him? Oh yeah...’charismatic.’ He was a charismatic kinda guy. But it was hard, too. By the time she met my dad, she was pretty sick of changing towns all the time. I think that’s why she and my dad got together. The opposites attract thing.”
Julie mulled this over. “Do you think we’re opposites?”
Matt considered the question.
“Not...not like they are. They...fought. A lot. My mom thought that the Army would be a stable life for them, but my dad was gone most of the time, and my mom didn’t really fit in on base with the other wives. She wanted to, but she was different. She had a lot of my granddad in her.” He paused for a moment. “She’s really sweet, and she can just kinda do everything she puts her mind to, cooking, sewing, singing, painting...” His voice trailed off.
“She sounds really artistic. Like you.” Julie hugged him.
“There’s nothing she can’t do. She’s so talented. It’s just that...” He paused. “None of it makes her happy.”
“Is..is that why they split up?”
“It was a lot of things. I just think they gave up trying to understand each other, after a while. He was frustrated with her, because she never stuck with anythng very long, and she thought the Army had turned him into a ‘tin soldier,’ with no heart, no feelings. That’s what she used to call him...’the tin soldier, our country’s finest.’”
Matt didn’t speak for a moment.
“They were unhappy. It’s better that they split up. That’s when I came to Dillon. Good thing, too, wasn’t it?” He kissed her forehead.
“But...your mom didn’t want you to stay with her?”
Matt shifted positions. Julie could tell the end of this conversation was near.
“She...she had trouble keeping jobs. It was just easier on everybody that I came here.”
It was enough. Julie could have asked questions long into the night, but this was the crux of the story. She knew there would be more. And hopefully, she’d meet Callie/Calliope and draw her own conclusions.
Matt’s leg was falling asleep under Julie’s hips, so he tried to edge her off but ended up poking her in the low back. She nudged him in return, and he responded by starting to tickle her. They feinted and parried each other’s attacks, going for each other’s ribs, or bellies, or just under the chin. The hammock returned to a rollicking elliptical shimmey beneath them. As they were getting more tangled up in each other, Julie turned onto her stomach and started to kiss him, her body pressed into his, her hair tangled in his fingers and draped over his face.
Suddenly, the hammock lurched to one side, and they flipped over the edge onto the ground. Their surprised grunts gave way to full-on belly laughs as they rolled together in the dusty earth.
They waited until Grandma was asleep in front of the TV before they snuck into the bathroom together. They stripped off their smudged clothes into a pile on the floor and stood under the weak pressure of the shower, rinsing each other clean.
***
After she made sure the kids were in bed and asleep, Pam changed into her nightgown and made her way to the downstairs office, where she reconvened her private research session into her daughter’s disappearance. It had become a kind of guilty ritual, always done either in the dark late at night or when she was alone in the house. It was like any habit that starts innocently enough: just an idle way to pass the time, perhaps to amuse or inform. Then it begins to dominate your free time, either directly by taking up hours online, or preoccupying your thoughts when you aren’t in front of the computer. Pam didn’t want to go out anymore. She wanted to stay in.
Lyla had her own computer in her room, but Pam couldn’t bring herself to sit at her desk, surrounded by the various reminders of her daughter’s life. Lyla had taken down all her Panther memorabilia, her personal photos and mementos, the trophies and banners and buttons. All of it had been shoved in a box before Christmas and put out a the curb for trash pick-up. Pam had rescued it and hid it away in a storage container attached to the ceiling of the garage. Lyla wouldn’t need to know it was still around until the day she decided she wanted to have it back.
The first entries on the blog dated from March. They were short, curt, somewhat tentative. Pam read the first few without gaining the least insight. Except for one thing. Lyla might have busied herself with saying very little. But she was saying something. Even the one-sentence posts practically leapt off the screen, they were so laden with frustration.
03/11/07
so. it’s come to this. i feel the need to write a blog. what’s happening to me??
03/12/07
i’ve been writing a blog for a class at school, and it doesn’t seem as much of a waste of time as I’d expected. but I don’t feel like I can say much on it. anything, everything could get out, even though we don’t have to share our posts with the rest of the class. i like the teacher, but you just never know. so I’m going to write here instead. it might be interesting, to see what comes out. or doesn’t. still not sure who’s going to read this, because I’m not telling anybody in RL about it. what strangers would want to read about me? what would they say? but that’s the point, I guess...strangers couldn’t say worse things than my friends have. if I have any friends left. T
that’s a good question. do I have any friends?
03/13/07
friday the thirteenth. going over to my dad’s place tonight. “weekend visitation.” sounds like I should be meeting up with an angel instead of the devil incarnate. how appropriate.
03/15/07
what’s that song...”you think you know me..” or something...
hold on, time for Google...
here it is:
You give your hand to me
And then you say, "Hello."
And I can hardly speak,
My heart is beating so.
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well.
Well, you don't know me.
No you don't know the one
Who dreams of you at night;
And longs to kiss your lips
And longs to hold you tight
Oh I'm just a friend.
That's all I've ever been.
‘Cause you don't know me.
yeah, that about sums me up.
***
Tim was on his way home from his summer job late one Friday afternoon when he took a detour to the Street’s house. He was working for a paper products distributor out of Midland, assigned as the second man on two-man teams that delivered paper towels, toilet paper, napkins, and paper plates to the various megamarts around the district. Tim provided the muscle, while the other men drove the truck and handled the paperwork. There wasn’t much to the job, and not much need to talk about anything while he was working, or afterwards, which suited him just fine. He opened a checking account with the proceeds from his first paycheck, though a good portion of each check was spoken for every week. Billy saw to that.
He and Jason had spent most weekends in each other’s company that spring and had reestablished their rapport, though some of their summer activities had changed since the days of waterskiing and football camp. These days, it was more likely they’d get a bite to eat, hit a party, and go sit out at the lake on the dock and just be. It was enough.
But Tim was feeling expansive that night, having cashed his check this week instead of handing it straight over to Billy, feeling the wad of bills press hard against his hip while occupying his back pocket. He told himself he’d give Billy his share of the “rent” the next day, after he and Jason selected their evening’s activities. Tim had a few ideas in mind.
At the Street’s house, Jason’s parents weren’t home yet from work, but Jason was there, having just finished leading conditioning drills at football camp. Still the low man on the totem pole in the Panther coaching hierarchy, he was tasked with all the least-desirable jobs. His assigned players were all the freshman and JV backs, some so small that Jason had to ignore his concerns about playing them against the larger kids. This was football. If you’re here, you play. Even if an injury could...evenif it seemed reckless, to make growing boys throw their bodies and brains at stationary targets, especially each other.
But the harder part was the psychological effect of being around young kids who weren’t quite sure what to make of him. There were a few new recruits who had just moved into Dillon’s jurisdiction who only had vague ideas about who Jason was, or had been, and he could see them at times, casting sideways glances at him, trying to evaluate what kind of coach he could be when he couldn’t even stand up. The other kids were respectful, but they didn’t revere him as they once had, when his future was the one they would tie their own dreams to and hope to somehow, possibly emulate.
He wasn’t that Jason Street anymore. Which Jason Street he was now, he still couldn’t be sure.
At least Tim was one source of continuity from ‘BTA’: Before the Accident. Lyla had stopped even acknowledging him when they bumped into each other, and he avoided Buddy at all costs, though it was harder to keep his distance when Buddy was lurking around the fieldhouse, opining on every issue and finding ways to intimidate and ingratiate all at the same time. Jason knew he needed a new crowd, a crowd that would see him as he was now, not as he had been or might have been. How to find that new social circle was more uncharted territory.
At least he and Tim could drop in on each other and be together wherever, whenever, and however they liked. Which was the reason Tim could show up unannounced on Jason’s doorstep with a plan in mind, and it was as if Jason had thought it up himself.
“Steaks, baked potatoes, and brew. What do you say?” Tim held up the wad of cash. “We could go to the Landing Strip, check out the entertainment, have an excellent meal...” Tim nodded his head encouragingly. “It’s been too long, Street. You need to re-engage the mojo, and I’m here to provide the means.”
Jason smiled. “That does sound excellent...” He wheeled himself to the kitchen and got a case of beer out of the pantry. “But why don’t we save some of that cash and just cook over at your place, then go out? I don’t really like to mix my media, if you know what I mean.”
Tim tucked the money back in his pocket and held open the front door.
“You always did have a big brain on you, man. Let’s do it.”
A short time later, steaks and potatoes secured from the market, they made their way back to the Riggins Estate. Billy was home, as he had been all day. He was bartending at a local dive now while he waited for another sales job to come through. It was probably not the best place for him to be working.
He was on the couch with chips and beer close at hand, flipping through channels when the boys showed up.
“Gentlemen. Making a pit stop before heading out tonight?” He drained his beer and skipped it off the coffeetable into a basket that was already full of other cans. “You know I keep tellin’ you to come by the bar while I’m working so’s I can set you up cheap. You just pass me a little green, and I’ll keep the drinks flowin’.”
Tim put the grocery bag on the kitchen counter and turned on the broiler. Technically, they had a grill, but it hadn’t been used since their dad had been home. None of them was patient enough to wait for the charcoal to get to the right temperature. They also enjoyed the smell of sizzling meat that permeated the house for a day or two after they used the broiler. It was almost like having leftovers on hand, which virtually never happened.
“Yeah, we’ll keep that in mind,” Tim replied, taking out three potatoes and poking holes in them with a fork. These would go in the microwave, a cast off from a neighbor down the street who put it out in their trash one day. The keypad didn’t work any longer, but the cooking elements were fine. The Riggins brothers had become accustomed to punching various buttons to get it to start and kept punching them until the food in question was adequately cooked. They considered it a reasonable exchange for a free appliance.
Tim put the first potato on the carousel and hit a couple of keys. The microwave beeped and started cooking.
“So Jason...” continued Billy, another beer in hand. “How’s that gig of yours going now that you’ve been at it a while? Still keeping body and soul together?”
In a million years, it would never have occured to Jason that coaching the Panthers was just a means to an end, as Billy suggested. But oddly, that description seemed entirely...apt.
“Good, it’s good. You know, for now. For a guy like me, just out of school, and...
“...still in a chair,” Billy said, finishing Jason’s sentence.
He was facing the TV, or he’d have noticed Jason’s shocked expression and Tim’s eyes narrowing in anger.
“Billy...what the fuck, man...”
Jason waved him off. “Stop, it’s OK...”
Billy heard the tension in Jason’s voice and turned to look at him.
“Hey, I didn’t mean, I wasn’t saying that you’re...that it’s...” he fumbled through several iterations of an apology but came up with nothing. “I just wanted to know if you’re...uh...doing OK.”
“Real articulate, bro,” scoffed Tim, cracking open a beer and drinking down most of it in one swallow. “Sounded even worse than me.”
“Naw, it’s...I’m fine,” replied Jason quietly. “It’s a reasonable question...given what happened, am I OK with what I’m doing now?” He sat back in his chair. “I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest.”
Billy rose from his seat and came into the kitchen. “Baked potatoes and steaks? Did you get some for me?” He began rooting around in the paper bag from the market. “I guess I just wondered, y’know, if you’d still want this job if you weren’t in a chair.” He opened the oven and returned the broiler pan, with three steaks set out on it, to the oven.
Jason replied, trying to keep his voice even, “I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life nine months ago. I thought I wanted to play college ball, then pro ball, that whole thing, that whole path. For as long as possible and as well as possible. It’s true, I didn’t think about coaching. But that’s because coaching was so far down the road, decades, maybe, if I was lucky.” He wheeled himself to the counter and took a beer out of the case. “Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have thought about it.”
“But it does mean,” remarked Billy, taking a potato out of the microwave and putting another in its place. “...that you’re doing something you never planned to do. So...that’s what I’m asking. Is it working out, even though you didn’t plan it?”
“What else should he do, Billy?” thundered Tim, pushing his brother out of the kitchen. “Any bright ideas, Mr. Bartender This Week, Salesman Next Week? You’re a pretty bad example of planning, I’d say.”
“Yeah? You know what? You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Billy began to pace in front of the TV.
“My whole LIFE has been about not having a plan, ‘cause I wasn’t ALLOWED to have my own plan. I was gonna play golf, then 9-11 happened. Then Dad left. Then you turned out to be...you...” He returned to the couch, picked up his beer, and made his way to the front door. “This is EXACTLY why I’m askin’ these questions, Jason...’cause it’s just too damn easy to end up like me.” He picked up his keys from the coffee table and opened the front door.
“What’s that called...yeah, that’s it...” He took a last swig of his beer and flicked the can towards the kitchen. “I’m a goddamn cautionary tale. You enjoy your dinner, boys, ‘cause a steak and a few beers might be all you get to look forward to from now on.”
***
4/20/07
so. my mother. what can i say about her that won’t sound like i’m just a raving bitch? she married my dad. she was young. big mistake. huge, actually. because my dad is a serial adulterer. secretaries seem to be his thing. strippers too, but i don’t even want to know if they were ever his girlfriends. but i guess money was changing hands no matter where he met these women. the last one, the one who is the mother of this girl i know, she got a job with him. and then, she did what i guess all the others didn’t have the guts to do...she outed him. at church. in front of me, my mom, pretty much everybody in town who cared. well. they may not have ‘cared,’ but they found it interesting to ‘know.’
i took my mom’s side, because how could i not, but now? now i wonder if maybe she’s worse than my dad. i guess he’s always been like this, been a cheater and liar and a scumbag. so the question is...why would my beautiful, sweet mother stay with him? because of me and my brother and sister? is that all she thought she could do? should she have walked away when we were younger? would it have been easier then?
maybe if she had, we would’ve been messed up for a while, but we would’ve found a new way. now? now I don’t know if i can ever look my mother in the eye again.
***
The next weekend, Tami was on her way back to her car after doing some shopping at the strip mall close to her house when she caught a glimpse of a woman slumped on a bench outside the hair salon. It was midday on a Saturday, the parking lot and stores busy with patrons, but no one seemed to notice the woman. Tami thought she looked familiar and went to take a closer look.
It was Pam Garrity.
Tami approached her carefully. Pam’s head rested in the crook of one arm, which she had propped up on the back of the bench. Her body language was lax, her knees falling open and her other hand idly draped across her lap. Tami wasn’t sure if she was asleep, sick, or just exhausted.
Tami heard her sigh and knew, at least, that she was awake. She sat down next to her.
“Pam?” She put her hand on her arm. “Are you OK? It’s Tami Taylor.”
Pam looked over at her, then turned away again.
“Oh, Tami. Have...have you been sitting there long? I’m a little out of it today.” She raised her hand to look at her watch. “Is that the time? I need to see if the kids are done with their haircuts. I thought I’d just step outside for a minute, and look what happens...” She seemed ready to rise from the bench but instead settled back again.
Tami moved a little closer.
“How...how are you doing, these days? Any...any news?”
Pam stared straight ahead.
“I can’t sleep anymore,” she said, drained of any expression whatsoever. “I’m not hungry, I’m not thirsty, I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to talk to people. I don’t want people to talk to me.” She stopped herself, realizing what she’d just said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded...” She actually tried to make eye contact with Tami but broke off the attempt almost immediately, returning to staring stonily into space.
“I know y’all mean well, everyone’s been so kind...” She tipped her head to one side. “I just don’t have anything to say anymore. There’s just nothing to say.”
Tami put her hand on Pam’s arm, very lightly.
“We’re all thinking about you, and about Lyla. You know we’re praying for the best.”
“I know you are. I know you mean well.”
Tami could tell this was only Pam’s politeness speaking. She decided it might be best to leave her to herself.
“Well, I just wanted to say hello...”
Just then, Pam turned and looked at Tami for the first time.
“I think I might have driven her away.”
Tami wasn’t sure how to respond.
“What...I’m not sure I know what you mean...?”
“She had a blog. Lyla. Do you know what a blog is?” Pam turned away again. “I didn’t. But now I’m very familiar with it. She wrote about all kinds of things we never talked about. I’ve been reading it. I’ve read it all, over and over again. It seems like the only thing I can do now. I read it every day. I keep looking for clues, ideas about where she might be, who she might be with...” She stopped again.
“Well, that’s part of it. I really read it because she writes about me. Not...not good things.” She put one hand to her face and covered her eyes.
“And you know what, Tami? She’s not wrong. She’s not wrong. I was a terrible example to her. Our marriage was a terrible example. I told myself I was doing the right thing, giving my children a secure home, a promising future...but I sold out. I never thought I was a sell-out, but now I know I am. And my daughter had to be the one who showed me that.”
Tami tried to respond soothingly. “Teens say so many things in the heat of the moment. Julie has said some terrible things to me lately, and I try to be patient, try to acknowledge how things are a little hard on her these days too...”
“So you know what I mean, then. We think we’re making the best choice, to make things happy and comfortable for our kids, when all the ugliness is right there below the surface, and we don’t acknowledge it, we don’t try to change it...and then something happens, something like this...” Her voice caught. “And it’s over. Your chance is over.”
“It’s not over. Don’t say that, Pam. You can’t give up now. NOW is the time Lyla needs you the most. If you were ever strong for your children, now is the time. I don’t like having Eric in Austin while I’m going through this pregnancy, and I know Julie misses him so much, but we’ll get through this, like you’ll get through this...”
“So that’s what really hurts now,” said Pam, as if she’d not heard a word Tami said. “She’s gone, maybe even dead, and it all happened at a time when she had no respect for me, at all.”
Pam’s expression was flat, her eyes dull.
“And the thing is...she’s right. I thought we were close. I thought we were so alike. But I don’t want her to have a life like mine. I know that now. I wish...I need her to know that. I just...she...that’s not how I want this to end for us. It can’t end this way.”
Tami squeezed her arm but said nothing. There was no way to assure Pam that things would, in fact, end differently.
Pam seemed to gather herself, returning to a more engaged demeanor. The return to being a good Dillon Wife...like those Stepford Wives of movie fame. But without the tony zip code.
She picked up her purse and smoothed her skirt.
“I’m sorry, Tami, I didn’t mean to go on like that. I have to run now. You have a good weekend. Bye-bye!”
***
4/25/07
is there ANYONE in my hometown who isn’t a complete and utter hypocrite??
including me?