Crushed (22 page)

Chapter 74

A Choice

Clyde's hard boots made a hollow echo as he walked through the empty halls. He didn't like the halls when they were full of kids and he didn't like them empty, so he guessed that meant he didn't like them no matter what. Not exactly a major newsbreak.

Outside, the street and sidewalks were dirty but dry, a good sign for the ride home. There wasn't a lot of light left, but he didn't feel like hurrying. As he turned the corner to the parking lot, he did what he always did: check to make sure his Vespa was where he left it. It was, but he was immediately distracted by peripheral movement.

A girl half slid and half fell out of a big car and was beginning to stumble away, past a red Firebird, when three boys caught up with her.

Clyde stopped in his tracks.

It was Theo Driggs, Craig Ashworth, and a big thuggish guy from the shop class: Mickey Trammel. The girl was Audrey Reed.

Clyde didn't think anymore. He just ran, his pack bouncing roughly on his back and the wrapped vase cradled in the crook of his arm like a football.

Craig was grabbing Audrey by her upper arms, yanking her upright.

Clyde slowed just enough to set the vase safely on the ground; then, running closer, he yelled, “Hey!”

It was as if he were the director and he'd just yelled, “Cut.” Everyone stopped and turned toward Clyde, including Audrey. Theo was the first to digest this development. He grinned and said, “Well, well. Here comes the cavalry.”

Audrey was standing on her own, but Craig still held both her arms with gloved hands. Audrey's face looked like white wax. The front of her sweater was wet.

“What's going on here?” Clyde said.

Theo said, “Just visiting.”

Clyde looked at Audrey, then at Craig. “Let her go.”

Theo was grinning back, working on his next move, when a voice behind Clyde said, “Hey, what's this?”

Clyde turned and saw Mickey Trammel tearing the newspaper off of his vase. “Looks like one of those pottery projects,” he said, holding it up.

Theo said to Clyde, “That breakable object yours, Mumsford?”

Clyde didn't answer. He was staring at his vase, which Mickey held casually in one hand.

“Let's see it,” Theo said, and Mickey flipped it his way.

Theo caught it. He studied the vase, then Clyde. “Very nice work. Who's it for?”

Clyde didn't answer.

Theo shrugged, then said, “Mickey the T, on a slant pattern.” Mimicking a quarterback, he spiraled the vase toward large and flabby Mickey Trammel, who caught it bobblingly against his chest. Mickey trotted it back to Theo, who looked again at Clyde. “I can keep passing, but I can tell you right now, Mickey the T drops more than he catches.” He paused. “Now who is it for?”

Clyde stared at the vase in Theo's hand. “My mother,” he mumbled.

“What?” Theo said, and cocked his arm as if to pass the vase again.

“My mother,”
Clyde said louder.

Theo let out a harsh laugh. “Your mama,” he said, and began tossing the vase from one hand to the other.

Clyde glanced around. Theo and Mickey were watching him with expectant faces, but Craig, the one who was still holding Audrey's arm, was not. He was staring at the ground. Craig turned to Theo. “Cut him some slack, Theo,” Craig said in a low voice. “His mother's sick.”

Theo turned to the huge boy named Mickey and looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then he turned back to Clyde. “That true, Mumsford?”

Clyde gave the slightest nod.

Theo stared evenly at Clyde. “Okay, Mumsford, who does the cavalry want to save today? The rich girl who ratted on you, or the breakable object you made for your dying mama?”

Clyde stared at him. It was as if Theo had read his mind.

“I'm serious,” Theo said. “You get to save one or the other.”

Clyde said, “Let Audrey go, Craig.”

Theo laughed. “You either have to say ‘the rich girl who ratted on me,' or ‘the breakable object I made for my dying mama.' ”

Clyde let a second or two pass, then said, “The rich girl who ratted on me.”

He looked at Audrey, and Audrey looked at him.

Theo, still holding the vase, shrugged. “Actually, it's ex-rich girl, but still, our Mountie's made his decision.” He turned to Audrey. “Adios, Miss Caviar. You've been rescued by a mummy.”

Craig released Audrey's arms, and Theo put her car keys into her hand. She moved in wobbly steps to her car. It took her a while to get the key into the ignition, but once she did, the car started and she drove away without looking back.

Clyde stood with the others, watching her go. After she'd turned out of the parking lot, Theo turned to Clyde. “Didn't seem that grateful, did she?”

Clyde didn't speak immediately. Then he said, “Why'd you let her go?”

Theo kept staring at the Lincoln's red taillights receding into the dusk. He shrugged. “I don't know, something happened to that girl when her father went bust. She just . . . kind of lost her shine.” He turned to Clyde and broke into a grin. “And then there's the puking. There's something about the libido that doesn't like puke on the shoes.”

Clyde realized that under different circumstances, he might have thought that was funny. But these weren't different circumstances. He said, “What do you mean, her father went bust?”

Theo cocked his head slightly. “You really aren't the Yellow Guy, are you? Her father lost the fancy house, the fancy car, the whole fancy shebang.” A pause. “The
Yellow Paper
headline would read, ‘Riches to Rags.' ”

There was a silence then, and a stirring among Theo's friends. There had been a strange loss of momentum. Mickey Trammel said, “Okay, Theo, where are we here?” Theo looked at Mickey, then at the vase in his hand, then at Clyde.

“Visiting hour's over,” he said, and, still staring at Clyde, he with one quick motion lofted the vase high into the air.

Clyde's eyes lifted to the blue vase spiraling up into the sky, where finally it seemed to stop suspended for a moment, then began plummeting straight down to the asphalt. Clyde shifted, bumped into Craig, but never took his eyes from the vase, even as it settled into his outstretched hands. He'd caught it.

He looked at Theo, who was already turning away. “Merry Christmas, Mumsford,” Theo said, and as he made his way to the red Firebird, the others followed.

Clyde stood in the cold, deserted parking lot, holding the vase tight in both hands, watching the low-slung Firebird drive away, and not knowing quite what to think of Theo Driggs, or of Audrey Reed, or of almost anything else in the world.

Chapter 75

The Arrival of a Present

Once out of the parking lot, Audrey pulled her phone from her pocket. The screen looked exactly the same—she'd called no one. She must have hit the “clear” button by mistake. As she held the phone, her hand still trembled. What had Theo and his drones wanted? What were they going to do to her, because that was it, wasn't it?—they meant to do something to her. She should call the police, she should call the school, she should do something.

What she wanted to do was call Wickham.

Pathetic,
she thought.

She hit “2” on her phone, then—how had she forgotten this step?—hit “enter” to speed-dial her father, who answered on the fifth or sixth ring. “Hi, Polliwog. Where are you?”

Audrey swallowed. She tried to steady her voice. “On my way home.”

“Good. Me too, in about ten minutes—I just have to finish something up here. How about if I stop somewhere and pick up entrees for two?”

Within the car, the air was thick with the smell of vomit. “I'm not that hungry, Dad.” She wanted to tell him what had happened, but then he would stop sounding so normal and cheery.

“You'll change your tune when you lay eyes on what I bring home!” he said. “See you in about an hour?”

“Sure.” She would tell him later, maybe. She couldn't do it now.

“You okay, Audrey?”

“Yeah.” She stopped again. “It's just been kind of a long day.” She waited for her voice to even out again. “I'm glad school's out for a while,” she said at last. “See you at home.”

When Audrey got to her apartment, she took off her foul-smelling clothes and stood in the shower until the hot water ran out. Her father still wasn't home. She put on flannel pajamas and her heavy robe, and climbed into bed. She slept for almost twenty hours.

Shortly before noon on Saturday, Audrey opened her eyes and felt the world she'd escaped again take shape. It was December 20, the first day of vacation. And then Audrey thought,
Vacation from what?

Wickham was still with Lea.

C.C. was at the cabin.

Her father was still at work.

And somewhere out there Theo Driggs was driving around with his friends.

The apartment was quiet. Outside, the sky was gray. The drone of a heavy truck rose from the street.

Audrey felt dully hungry. In the kitchen, on the chrome table, her father had propped a note against the saltshaker:

Hi, Polliwog—You were sleeping, so I didn't wake you.
I figured all that school stuff had taken its toll. I brought
home chicken potpies last night—yours is in fridge if you
want it. Also, your Christmas present may come today,
so don't be surprised.

—XXX, Dad

As she took small bites of the cold potpie, she thought of Clyde Mumsford. How the vase she'd seen him working on that day at school was for his mother, and how his mother was sick. And how he'd chosen to keep her, Audrey, safe instead of the vase. She thought he'd probably made the wrong choice.

She took her dishes to the sink, but didn't wash them.

She stared for a long time out the window, at the traffic passing below, seeing many red cars but not Theo's Firebird.

She picked up a book she'd checked out from the library before Wickham had left. It was overdue. Audrey read a page and a half before she again fell asleep.

About half an hour later, she was awakened by the buzzing of the entry intercom.

Wickham. She couldn't help it—she hoped it was Wickham.

She pushed the intercom button and choked out, “Hello?”

But the voice answering from the lobby wasn't Wickham's.

It was a woman saying, “Is that you, Audrey?”

“Oggy?” Audrey said.

And the woman in the lobby, in a stolid German accent, said, “Who else?”

Chapter 76

Awakening

There, in the dingy lobby, was Oggy in a blue tweed coat with a fur collar. Oggy in a blue-and-white silk scarf. Oggy with a suitcase and two shopping bags. Oggy with a beaming smile. It was Oggy, Oggy, Oggy. Her hair was silver, her eyes small and black. She looked like a child's illustration of a person you could trust. Audrey threw both arms around Oggy's neck, breathed in her Echt Kölnisch Wasser, and whispered, “It's really you.”

Oggy looked Audrey up and down and said, “This is not mine Audrey I left in summer. You look . . .”

Audrey knew she was looking for the right word.

“. . . abgeschlafft.”

Audrey glanced down at herself. Droopy, she thought it meant. “I've been sleeping,” she said. Then she said something that hadn't been true, but now was. “I was just about to get cleaned up.”

Audrey took Oggy to the elevator and held open the gate with her foot while they scooted Oggy's heavy luggage inside. The bags filled nearly the whole floor of the elevator, which made Audrey recall the problem that awaited them upstairs. “Did Dad tell you how small this apartment is?”

“I am used to small,” Oggy said. “My sister she have one bedroom.”

While Oggy unpacked her things in Audrey's bedroom, Audrey washed and brushed her hair. They went together to the market, and within two hours Oggy had cooked warm potato salad, sausages, and red cabbage, and Audrey had told her everything, starting with Theo Driggs and working backward.

Oggy, shaking her head and wiping her hands on her apron, said, “I think Oggy vas vell too long avay.”

Audrey nodded. “Yes,” she said, and hugged her again.

Telling Oggy everything made her feel better, but it wasn't just that. Having Oggy in the same room with her made her feel like herself again. Everything smelled right again, and looked right, and felt right.

“Now this nice boy, Clyde,” Oggy said. “Tell me vat he is like.”

Audrey shrugged. “I don't know him. He's quiet and smart and keeps to himself. C.C. thinks he's handsome, but I never thought that because I always thought he was kind of creepy until . . .”

“Until you found out he vasn't,” Oggy said.

“Yeah.” She thought about it. “I feel so terrible that I got him beaten up when he was really trying to help me, but I was too smitten with Wickham to see it.”

Oggy, bleaching the cutting board and the sink, was quiet for a time. Then she said, “You should tell that to this boy, Clyde.”

Audrey mentioned how she'd tried to get him to talk to her at school but he wouldn't even answer her notes.

Oggy gave a dismissive shrug.
“Mannesstolz.
The man's pride. You let them parade it, then you try again.”

Oggy made it sound so possible. “By calling him?”

The older woman shook her head and gave her a friendly frown. “No,
mein Schatz.
You go to his door.”

Chapter 77

Ash

Wickham Hill sat smoking at the black desk in the upstairs bedroom that had once been his father's. Wickham's mother was at work. No one else was in the house. A blunt pencil lay on the desk, but Wickham wasn't writing. He wasn't reading. He wasn't listening to music. He was thinking. The afternoon was nearly gone, the room had grown dim, but he didn't move to turn on a light. When the ash on his cigarette grew long, he tapped it into a small ashtray made of Waterford crystal, a gift from Lea.

A piece of English toffee wrapped in clear plastic also lay on the desk. Audrey had made the toffee for Lea's birthday, but Lea hadn't eaten any. “I can't,” she'd said, setting a piece in front of him. “It makes me feel . . . funny.” He'd turned down the toffee, too, and then, for some reason he couldn't explain, he put the wrapped square in his pocket when he went home.

He looked at the candy on the desk and thought of Audrey with a strange detachment. It was like poking at skin that had been deadened with anesthesia. He couldn't feel his former affection for her, or hers for him.

He supposed this was how his father was. Yesterday a Christmas card had come in the mail. The preprinted signature said it was
from Dr. James Edward Yates and his entire staff.
Included were two computer-generated checks for three hundred dollars, one in Wickham's name and the other in his mom's. There was a handwritten message to Wickham and his mother:
My family and I are going to the Caribbean for the
holidays. Please don't call my home or office.
Wickham was glad he hadn't been there when his mother opened the card. She should have been furious, but probably she was just miserable. Wickham himself had wanted to rip up the check, which he supposed was a Christmas present, but then had thought better of it.

He put the cigarette to his lips and pulled smoke deep into his lungs for a second or two before expelling it.

His mother had decided to go back to South Carolina, where at least she knew a few people. Wickham hadn't figured out how to tell her he was leaving Jemison with Lea Woolcott, who, it turned out, was as eager to leave the town as he was.

Lea was different. Outside, a calm package, but inside, everything bursting to get out. She was the one who'd said, “Let's drive the Audi to the Finger Lakes.” The one who'd said, “Let's find a hotel.” The one who'd said, “You and I see each other's secrets, and people who see each other's secrets should face the fact that they're always going to be together.”

It had taken him only the briefest second to see that she'd meant marriage.

“Not now, maybe,” she'd said, looking at him with her arctic blue eyes. “But sooner or later.”

Spoken in a tone that he simply could not disbelieve.

“What would be fun,” she said softly, “would be a secret engagement.”

But he couldn't support them, he'd said. Not now, and probably not ever.

And in her soft voice, she'd said, “I have a trust. All I have to do to start the checks coming is enroll in college.” She'd checked with the school counselor, and it wasn't impossible to go to college early admission. You needed the grades, the credits, the test scores, and a letter from the principal, all of which she had.

“And I don't,” he said.

“So you'll get a GED,” she said. “Someplace warm, I'm thinking. Someplace far, far away.” Her pale eyes turned frisky. “How do you feel about Hawaii?”

Wickham said he'd always wanted to dive in Hawaii.

“There's a honeymoon for you,” Lea had said softly. “Not that I'm proposing.” A conspiratorial smile. “That would be your assignment, should you choose to accept it.”

Now he tapped ash into the crystal saucer.

He would accept it, of course. He would cash his puny three-hundred-dollar check, buy a ring, arrange with a fancy restaurant to hide the ring box in the dessert, listen to her tell all about her secret dreams, do the whole romantic thing.

With Lea, he could get away from everything, including Dr. Yates.

He crushed his cigarette out.

Then he took the blunt pencil and, pressing hard so that the old black paint flaked off, engraved this in the surface of his father's boyhood desk:

W.H.

L.W.

Beneath that, he wrote
Engaged,
then added the date and let the pencil drop.

Wickham Hill stood, took the cellophane-wrapped English toffee with him to the window, and looked out. The lawn was yellow, the trees were bare. You could see right through the lilac hedge. He peeled back the plastic wrapper and regarded the chocolate-covered toffee for a moment or two. Then he set the whole piece into his mouth and felt the sweetness of it spread over his tongue. It was delicious.

He stood very still then, staring out, wishing it would snow and cover the yellow lawn and the dirty street and the bare hedge with white and white and more white.

The toffee still lay on his tongue.

As it melted, he moved it to the side of his mouth, between his cheek and his teeth. He'd always been the kind of child who didn't bite his lollipops. He wanted them to last, and so they did last. He sucked on the toffee and waited for the sound of Lea's car.