Criss Cross (15 page)

“H
ey, Lenny,” said Phil, “did you go to confession today?”

He was going to ask next whether Lenny had seen that the wooden boxes were on, over all the statues of the saints. It was because the carnival was coming up. Phil had always thought the boxes were to protect the statues from accidental damage while the courtyard was thronged with people, but this morning someone at the church told him that they were to keep the saints from seeing people playing games of chance. Because it was the same as gambling. He didn’t know if it was true, but he thought it was a funny idea. Like putting a bag over God’s head.

That’s why he brought it up, that’s what he was going to say, but he never said it, because Lenny said no, he was working over at the garage all morning, and then Patty said, “So, what do you guys confess when you go to confession?

“I mean,” she went on, “do you have to say every little thing, or just really bad things, like murder? Or coveting your neighbor’s wife or something?”

She was asking Lenny and Phil. They were the Catholics. Phil just looked at her, but Lenny was willing to give it a shot.

“Well,” he said, “do you know about venial and mortal sins?”

“No,” said Patty. “I’ve heard of mortal sins, but not venial ones. I don’t think we have those at our church. We just say at the same time how basically sinful and unclean we all are. Which I don’t really believe. So if you think about it, I’m telling a lie when I’m supposed to be trying to be holy.”

Phil’s thoughts had skipped from the upcoming carnival to other upcoming events.

“Seldem Days is next week, too,” he said. “Next Saturday.”

He was about to say how it was funny that it was called Seldem Days, when it was only one day, but he didn’t get to say it because Debbie said, “I have to go work for Mrs. Bruning.”

And then Patty said, “Can’t you switch it for another day?”

Debbie shrugged. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll miss the parade, but I don’t really care. It’s pretty much the same every year. I can still go for the chicken dinner and the fireworks.”

“I’ll go,” said Lenny.

“I’ll go,” said Patty.

“Me, too,” said Hector. He was hoping to see Meadow there. He had told her about it at guitar class, at Rowanne’s suggestion. He had been careful to mention it out of earshot of Pastor Don, so it wouldn’t become another group event.

“Oh, yeah,” said Meadow. “I already know about that. We’ll probably come. Maybe I’ll see you there.”

She smiled at Hector, and her smile was like a warm summer day. Her eyes were like dancing stars. She looked like a peach with a suntan. He thought about her as he followed the others to the pickup.

Lenny climbed into his position in the driver’s seat and turned the key. He jiggled it a little bit, took it out, put it back in, turned it again.

“Turn it on,” said Phil.

“I can’t,” said Lenny.

“Why not?”

“I think the battery’s dead.”

He reached for a knob on the dashboard and turned it, with another click. “Someone left the lights on,” he said. “I’m trying to remember if it was me. I hope not.”

“We could listen on the patio,” said Debbie. “On the transistor. It wouldn’t be as good, but it would be all right.”

“My dad is gonna be ticked,” said Lenny. “He goes in to work at midnight tonight.”

“Maybe you better tell him.”

“He’s asleep. I’d have to wake him up.”

He hesitated, then he said, “Okay. We’re gonna try something. I’ve helped my dad do it a couple of times. If it doesn’t work, I’ll go in and wake him up.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to push the truck till it starts rolling down the driveway, and Debbie’s going to pop the clutch.”

“I am?” said Debbie.

“How come Debbie gets to drive?” asked Phil.

“Because she’s a girl. In case you hadn’t noticed. She’s too helpless and puny and weak to push. And besides, she knows how to work the clutch.”

“How do you know that?” Hector asked Debbie.

“I showed her,” said Lenny.

“How come you never showed me?” asked Phil.

“I don’t know,” said Lenny. “You never asked me, for cripes sake.”

Debbie was thinking that she was not helpless or weak, but that she wanted to drive again, so she wasn’t going to say anything about it.

“What should I do?” asked Patty. “I’m even punier than Debbie.”

She was hoping not to have to help push.

“Go stand down by the street and make sure no one’s coming,” said Lenny.

“Okay,” she said, and trotted off.

Lenny explained to Debbie what it was that she was supposed to do. He made it sound as uncomplicated as plugging a cord into an outlet. Maybe a little more complicated than that. But not a lot.

“What if it doesn’t start?” she asked.

“Just put on the brake,” said Lenny.

“Okay,” she said. That was easy. She already knew how. “I’m ready. Go push.”

The three boys pushed several times before the truck budged even a little. The truck seemed determined to stay where it was. Lenny kept telling Phil and Hector where to stand, and where and when to push.

“I think I might be puny and weak and helpless, too,” Hector announced hopefully.

He had new respect for the truck. He was willing to let the truck win.

Lenny grinned. “Shut up and push,” he said.

They got it into a small rocking movement, and from inside the cab Debbie could hear Lenny saying, “This is good. Just keep doing it.”

Her right hand was on the knob of the stick and her feet were in position. In her mind she went through what Lenny had told her to do. The truck began moving, in just one direction, not rocking anymore, but rolling down the gentle grade of the gravel driveway. Slowly, then a little faster. Methodically she followed Lenny’s instructions. The truck was almost to the street when the engine turned over. She shifted into neutral, revved the engine a little, and put on the brakes just as the truck reached the other side of the street. A piece of cake. There was nothing to it. She saw Patty standing there and realized that she had forgotten to look to her to make sure no one was coming. Oops.

“It worked,” she said to Lenny, as he arrived at the window.

“We got lucky,” said Lenny.

“What do you mean, ‘lucky'?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t always work, that’s all.”

Lenny decided they should listen to the show while driving around the Boney Dump at the end of the street, to charge up the battery. When they got there, he decided he might as well teach Debbie how to do a three-point turn. They drove around and around, back and forth. Phil and Hector rode in the back, listening through the window that opened in the back of the cab.

Suddenly the sound of the engine sputtered and died. The truck rolled to a quiet stop. Hector and Phil heard Lenny say, “Shit!” and then they heard him say, “Excuse me.”

Phil called out, “What happened?”

“We’re out of gas,” said Lenny. “I can’t believe it.”

He got out and grabbed a gas can from the back, and they all set off across the cindery expanse, toward the next outpost of civilization, a low clump of trees and buildings where there was a Sinclair station.

As they crunched along over the cinders, Lenny fished in his pockets for money. He turned to Patty, who was crunching nearby, and said, “Do they have penance at your church?”

D
ebbie was reading
Wuthering Heights.
Physically, she was in the backyard under a tree, with more backyards in all directions but one, all cluttered with picnic tables, clotheslines, grills, garbage cans, lawn chairs, wading pools, patios. Petunias. Tomato plants. Sprinklers. But otherwise, she was out on the moors with Catherine, crying Heathcliff’s name out into the blinding storm. Their rough and wild childhood friendship had deepened into love, but Catherine had become engaged to someone else who was more educated, refined, and wealthy. And Heath-cliff had gone away. There was more to it than that, but still, Debbie wondered at how Cathy could marry Linton. She didn’t think money and refinement mattered to her the way it did to Cathy. If she liked someone, she would like them. That was all that would matter.

She looked up from her book. Lenny was working on his dirt bike. She watched him for a few minutes. He was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves chopped off, and she noticed that he had muscles in his arms. When had that happened, she wondered. Lenny had never been athletic. It must be related to the gearhead phase he was going through.

She wished for a moment that she lived in another century, in another country, with moors and mansions and elegant ways of speaking and complicated romantic clothing: cloaks with hoods, velvet, riding boots. Wool shawls and handkerchiefs. A world where she didn’t even know what all the words meant. Like, what was
dimity
? And what exactly was a fortnight? She hadn’t gotten around to looking them up; she just guessed and kept reading.

A lot would depend, of course, on whether you were born in the mansion or the hovel.

And, if she had been born in another century, she would now be dead, and she liked it that she was, at this moment, alive.

Cathy, she thought, had never experienced the freedom of wearing cut-offs all summer. Of riding a bike. The pleasure of a Coke poured over ice. She went into the house to get one.

L
enny was eating a ham sandwich at the kitchen table. He was reading about solenoids in
Popular Mechanics
, or trying to. Blinding stripes of sunlight blasting through the Venetian blinds were causing blinking afterimages to dance around in his eyeballs. It was a trippy effect. He reached for the string to adjust the angle of the slats. When they were horizontal, and his eyes stopped freaking out, he noticed that Debbie was sitting under the tree in the Pelbrys’ backyard, reading a book. Lenny felt a neighborly urge to go do something in his own backyard. Work on the dirt bike, maybe. He set his dish in the sink, took what was left of the sandwich outside, and bounced down onto the patio where he sat on the old glider, chewing and looking at his bike. He wasn’t sure what to do to it. It was already perfect. Just for fun, he decided he would change the front fork fluid.

Immediately he was absorbed in the pleasure of his task, only somewhat aware of the bright sun that poured down on his shoulders and made him squint, and the concrete paving bricks under his knees that made him periodically shift his position. He decided he would also adjust the chain. He loosened the rear axle nut and the chain adjuster, moved the swing arm back to tighten the chain, then tightened the axle nut back up again. Finishing, Lenny realized he was thirsty and stood up. The backyard rematerialized. The lawn chair under the Pelbrys’ tree was empty. Something about that was disappointing. He looked at it for a minute without remembering why, then opened the screen door and went inside to get something to drink.

D
ebbie’s thoughts drifted from the conversation. When they drifted back, it wasn’t to listen, but to watch Phil’s hands. She had never noticed how much he moved them around, talked with them, when he was excited about something, maybe because that was almost never. Normally he was so calm and even. Now his face was animated, and his hands darted and swooped like birds flying from perch to perch in the trees. She also noticed a mosquito bite starting to

bleed down his forehead, like a war wound. But it was his hands that briefly hypnotized her. They were expressive, and she hadn’t ever thought of Phil as expressive.

She felt she was seeing a hidden part of him. The thought came to her that maybe Phil was the childhood friend she was destined to fall in love with. As soon as she thought it, she saw him differently. She saw the handsomeness in his features, the interestingness of his personality. When Phil’s eyes met hers, she looked away quickly, suddenly self-conscious. It was completely stupid, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it.

She looked at her knee, where there was a scabbed scratch. She looked at a rose-of-Sharon bush in Lenny’s yard, lit to muted green brilliance on one side by the streetlight, the other side lost in the darkness. From up and down the street came ripples of conversations on porches.

Lenny was talking now and, listening once more, Debbie remembered the reason she had stopped paying attention in the first place. They were talking about a movie she hadn’t seen, going into rapturous detail about car chases and explosions and secret agent-type stunts involving helicopters, boats, and doing things while dangling from ropes. Expressive hand gestures.

Debbie decided that Phil probably did have hidden depths, but this wasn’t them. The romance, which had blossomed entirely inside her own head, faded. No one knew about it but her, and it all happened in less than five minutes. She was relieved that it was over, but now there was nothing to do but listen to the boring conversation.

Hector was sitting next to her on the curb. Patty had gone home a while ago. Hector appeared to be listening attentively to Lenny and Phil.

“Which do you like better,” he said to Debbie. “Listening to people talk about movies you haven’t seen, or listening to people try to remember what they dreamed last night?”

Debbie laughed.

“It always seems interesting when you’re the one who’s telling it, though,” she said.

“That’s true,” said Hector. “My grandmother thinks people are really interested in hearing about all of her surgeries.”

“My great-aunt thinks we really want to know that our fourth cousin got a job selling shoes in a department store.”

“My mother thinks people really want to know how she made the Jell-O salad.”

Debbie laughed again. “Probably some people do want to know that,” she said. “My mother would want to know.”