A Face in Every Window (16 page)

I said, "That's a loaded question," and Mam's smile faded. She flashed me a nervous glance, a flush rising up her neck to her face. Then she turned away from me and grabbed another dress. She said to the others, "Let's see if this dazzles." Her smile had returned, and she scurried back into the bathroom.

When Mam had closed the door, Melanie turned her head and said to me, "Can't you ever be happy for anyone? Give your mother a break, JP."

"Hey, why don't you give me a break and go live in your own home for a change?" I said, shifting so I stood in the doorway instead of leaning against it. "You must have the
perfect relationship with your parents, right? That's why you stay here all the time"

Jerusha said, "He's right. We can't judge—"

"And I don't need you defending me," I said, cutting her off. "Don't act like you get it. You wouldn't be encouraging her if you understood anything. But nobody here gets it. You're all this kind of free-love, free-living, what's-mine-is-yours people. You wouldn't encourage her if you got it, so spare me, okay?"

I backed away, then turned and headed off to my own room. On the way up the stairs I heard Mam come out and say, "This knit dress shows my tummy bulge. I haven't had a tummy bulge in years. Not since..."

She didn't finish. Jerusha and Melanie were insisting the dress looked great on her, and Mam, encouraged, said, "Yeah? You think so?" And I could hear the delight in her voice.

***

A
S THE DAYS
passed and it got closer to the time for her to leave I realized I'd never say anything to Mam, never do anything but watch her leave. I stopped trying to seek her out, stopped trying to catch her eye, but sometimes I'd look up and catch her watching me, looking almost sad, or maybe just thoughtful, as if she were wanting to talk to me now. I heard her come up to the third floor once. I recognized her footsteps as she walked halfway down the hallway toward my room, paused, then turned around and went back downstairs.

The day before she was to leave she'd gotten out of work early and sat out on the porch alone, as if she were waiting for me to get home from school I walked up the driveway, back
pack hoisted onto one shoulder, and kept my glance downward, pretending I didn't see her rocking on the porch. As I approached the steps, Mam stood up. I didn't look at her but kept moving up the steps.

"JP, can we talk?"

I stopped, and still looking down, shrugged. "What's the use? Will our talking keep you from going to Switzerland with that doctor?"

"No, JP, but I think—"

"Then what's the use?" I adjusted my pack on my shoulder and headed for the door. I thought Mam might stop me, but she let me go. I dragged up the stairs, up to the third floor, and saw Bobbi coming out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. I looked back toward her room and saw Don sitting on the floor, flipping through a magazine.
Was he living here, too, now?

I shook my head and Bobbi asked, "What's the matter with you?"

I walked past her into the steaming bathroom and shut the door.

Mam left for Switzerland the next morning. I watched from my bedroom window. Dr. Mike picked her up. Larry and Ben brought out Mam's luggage. The rest of them flocked around Mam, all still in the clothes they'd slept in—none could be called pajamas. I saw Pap hugging Dr. Mike, then hugging Mam, then Harold, then Mam again. He started for Dr. Mike one more time, but Dr. Mike hurried around to the trunk of his car and loaded Mam's luggage into it.

Mam hugged everybody good-bye while Melanie kept adjusting Mam's coat and sweeping her hand across the back
of it as if trying to brush something off of Mam's back. Susan handed Mam her purse and opened the car door for her. I felt something lurch inside me and I let out a sound like a sob, or like some wounded animal would make, and I saw Mam stop and look up at my window. I backed away, holding myself against my wall, stiff, not breathing, waiting, and then when I looked again the car was rolling down the drive and everyone was waving good-bye. Pap ran after the car, blowing kisses and following it to the end of the driveway.

Later that day, in school, I got my first B ever on an exam. I looked at it and felt nothing, no panic, no loss, no feeling that my brain was deteriorating. I said to myself,
Here it is, this is my life now.
I folded the test paper in half and slipped it into my notebook and got up and left the class. The class hadn't ended and the teacher called me back, but I kept walking.

I'd seen other kids walk out in the middle of class over the years and I'd thought they were jerks, losers. I did it and I felt a surge of power, of some kind of freedom I'd never experienced before. I kept walking. It felt good. I walked faster, my eyes fastened on the exit. I reached the doors to the outside and banged through them and walked faster, jogging down the steps, hurrying along the sidewalk, faster, until I was running. I felt my backpack slamming against my back, books jabbing at my spine, and I laughed. My mind had cleared. I understood those kids, those students who had gone before me over the years, who had stood up and walked out the door, slamming it behind them. They weren't losers. They were just taking back what belonged to them. They were taking back control, and that control gave them their freedom. Walking out, running out, felt so good, so free.

I shouted out loud, "I got a B!" And I laughed at the sound of my voice and shouted it again. "I got a B!" I kept running, shouting out words, sentences as I ran. "My mother's in Switzerland, everyone! She's sleeping with the great Dr. Wonderful! Dr. Great! Dr. BMW! Come to my house! Follow me and I'll set you free!" I ran toward home, shouting out anything that came to me. I was in control. I could do whatever I pleased, whatever, whenever, however. I could get Bs on tests, I could get Ds, Fs even. I could skip the tests altogether. I ran through town, past restaurants and Farley's Bookstore, all the way down the road past the playhouse, dodging tourists, shoppers, bums. I ran up and up the steep hill toward our house and I didn't feel tired, just exhilarated.
Follow me to my house, where love is free! Sex is free! We're all free!

I stopped when I reached the driveway and stood panting, my arms dangling by my sides, my leg muscles quivering, wasted by the charge up the hill. A picture of the scene with Mam and Dr. Mike riding off in his car flashed through my mind. I shook the thought away and slouched toward the house, dragging up the porch steps and on inside. I could feel the quiet, the stillness, like a presence. I recalled the feeling I had the first time I had been alone in our old house after Grandma Mary died, that empty, desolate feeling. It all came back to me. I crept along the hallway and into the kitchen, half expecting someone to jump out at me from behind a door. I slammed my pack and my notebook down on the kitchen counter, relieved by the noise. I opened and closed a few cabinet doors and swiped at the dish towel hanging from one of the cabinet knobs.

I turned around to face the room, the mess, and remembered the way it had looked the first day we saw it. Then it had been neat and spare, and the wood floors shone and the kitchen fireplace had dried herbs hanging down. Now wet clothes hung in front of the fireplace. Dishes were stacked up on the countertops, cereal boxes left out on the table, the Mr. Coffee had been left on with half a pot of coffee still in the pot, and coffee stains covered the counter around it like outlines of foreign countries.

I left the kitchen and wandered through the other rooms and found the same mess—clothes strewn about, paint cans with colors drip-dried on their sides, paintbrushes stuck hard to the paper bags they were set on, books, musical instruments—cello, flute, guitar, harmonica, and ukulele—plants of every kind and variety, bottles of wine, beer cans, soda cans, potato-chip bags—some empty, some not—and shoes. Everywhere I went I found shoes. We had beanbag chairs in every color of the rainbow and one huge plaid one that Ben always sat in, and in the living room our latest addition, Ben's huge fish tank I tapped the side of the tank when I walked past, and smiled. Ben had warned us all not to tap the side of the tank I tapped it again.

I wondered where Parakeet had gone. I called her, but she didn't come. Then I remembered, Delveccio had convinced Bobbi to return her to the SPCA. Bobbi returned her on the sly so the rest of us couldn't complain. What Delveccio wanted, Delveccio got.

I stepped outside and stood on the porch, wondering what kind of free thing I could do next Running out of school had felt so good, but coming home and touring the
house, I had allowed my old self, my old mood, to creep back. I looked at the cabin at the edge of the woods. Everyone had started calling it Larry's cabin. Jerusha had brought over a box of tools one day and said, "I'll just go put it in Larry's cabin and surprise him." That was it. Everyone called it Larry's cabin after that "I think they're all at Larry's cabin." "Would you go ask Harold if he wants to go to the concert with us? I think he's at Larry's."

I jumped off the porch and jogged out to the cabin. "My cabin," I said. I opened the door, expecting to see more mess, mess that had spilled over from the house—tools everywhere, maybe planks set over the missing floorboards—but the room stood neat and tidy. Larry had repaired the floor and kept it swept clean. I found the broom leaning against the wall beside one of the two windows. He had two boxes of tools set on the floor in the corner and a board he'd attached to the far wall where he hung still more tools. Newspaper had been laid out on the floor beneath this and on top stood another table, this one with a round top, freshly stained, giving the cabin its wood-and-chemicals smell. I ran my hand over the table. The stain had dried. I felt the side rubbed smooth by Larry's sanding, and circled my hand all around the rim. I remember he had bragged about using almost nothing but hand tools to make his table. He went into a long explanation of how he might set up a business creating colonial furniture using only hand tools, and wondering if he should apprentice under someone or just keep teaching himself.

"I was thinking," he said, dropping the English accent and developing a tougher, furniture maker's voice, "that I might just do it myself, go about it slowly. I'll take my time
and learn it right. Start with tables and just keep experimenting. Then when I feel I know tables, I'll move on to chairs and beds. Yeah, I do better working on my own. It'd be too much like my old man standing over me if I worked under someone."

Another time he came in after cutting his hand on one of the tools, dripping blood in the hallway, and said, "I might just do tables the rest of my life. I don't think there's an end to what they can teach me."

I didn't know a table could teach anything at all, but I knew that the one I had my hand on was a piece of art. It was simple and sleek and stained in walnut. I saw the can of stain and a rag sitting on the newspaper beneath the table. I ran my hand over the top of the table and then backed away. I backed out the door and closed it.

"James Patrick, it is. See, Colleen, it's not a burglar, it's just me boy, James Patrick."

Pap ran down the slope toward me, his arms wide, while Aunt Colleen stood next to her car with her arms folded, watching. I hadn't heard them drive up.

Pap grabbed me in a bear hug and said, "You beat me home today. How come you're in Larry's cabin? Is Erin there, too? Is yer Mam in there?"

I pushed away from Pap. "No, Pap, remember? Mam left for Switzerland this morning."

"I know that already, James Patrick. I know it"

"I thought you were a burglar," Aunt Colleen called to me. "What are you doing home so early? Erin said you didn't get home till five or five-thirty."

Pap and I walked up the slope to where Aunt Colleen stood waiting for me, a bright green purse dangling from her folded arms. She looked majestic somehow, standing at the top of the lawn with the house looming in the background. She looked as if the house were hers and she was guarding it against the likes of me. I wasn't too far from the truth.

"James Patrick," she said, when we had gotten within closer hearing range, "I can't believe you and that sister of mine could allow such havoc. The house is a disaster area, and who in heaven's name were all those people I found lounging and scrounging about this morning? I thought I'd walked into the wrong house."

"That's the way Mam likes it." I shrugged, enjoying the indignant look she gave me.

"Well, she has gone clear out of her mind. I always thought there was something wrong—" She caught herself and, looking at us, said, "Never mind. I'm going to wait around until those others get here. Patrick says they live with you."

"Yup, I told you that already," Pap said. "They live here all the time and they eat with us even and they call me Pap 'cause they think I'm their Pap, I think. But I'm not really, am I, James Patrick?" Pap turned to me, but I didn't answer. I was eyeing Aunt Colleen.

"What are you going to do? Kick them out?" I asked.

"No. But I can make them clean up. I thought Erin said you had a schedule for cleaning."

I nodded. "Yeah, we did once, but there's just too many people now, and too much junk."

"Well, we can just get rid of all that junk. We pan haul up a big trash canister if we have to, and load it all in. And we'd better do something about the ceiling in that parlor or you'll be having it in your laps. And the living room—we need a professional painter in there."

I felt a charge run through me. This was my day.

I said, "I've drawn up a plan of all the work that needs to be done. Want to see it?"

Aunt Colleen uncrossed her arms and stood taller. "Yes, yes I do, but you bring it out here. I don't think I could bear to go back in that house."

I ran up to my room and rifled through my desk drawer, hunting for the plans. The thin drawer overflowed with the torn photographs of Bobbi I had stashed there one furious afternoon, and I had to dig beneath flashes of her eyes, her hands, her hair, still feeling the pangs of hurt and envy, to find those plans.

I heard a car roll into the driveway and glanced out the window to see—who else but Don and Bobbi rolling into the drive in Don's pickup.