Evidence of Things Not Seen (3 page)

Leann laughs. A short, sharp “Hah” pops out of her mouth. It surprises her. Like the breath she was holding exploded out of her. Her laugh must have surprised Marshall. He jumps as if she had scared him. That makes her laugh more. She loosens her grip on the door handle. She’s glad he’s nervous too. Having him say it makes her relax.

“Yeah, a little too real.”

“Maybe it’s the corsage. You don’t have to wear it.”

Leann takes the corsage out of the box and puts it around her wrist. She stretches her arm in front of her and looks at the bracelet of white petals. “No, I want to wear it. It’s beautiful.”

“Good. I mean, let’s—I mean, it doesn’t mean anything. They’re just flowers. It’s tradition, right?”

“Right.” Leann raises the white flowers to her nose, breathes in their fragrance, and leans back onto the seat.

Marshall circles the Fred High parking lot, looking for Robert’s truck. He sees it parked in the far corner of the lot. Robert is sitting on the tailgate. The cab windows are open and the twang of Robert’s favorite country and western station accompanies Mary Louise as she twirls around in an empty parking space next to the truck. She looks like a ballerina. Even her skirt is a white net material.

“We saved you a spot.” Mary Louise stops twirling and jumps out of the way. “Actually, I saved you a spot. Robert wouldn’t dance with me. He thought it was too goofy to dance in a parking lot.”

“Hell, yes,” says Robert. He clicks off his radio. “It’s already pretty goofy I spent twenty bucks on a damn corsage and another ten on this tuxedo from Goodwill for a pretend date.”

“Ooooh … you’re lucky, Mary Louise,” says Leann, admiring the bridge of sweetheart roses circling her wrist. “He spent more on your corsage than his tuxedo.”

Leann and Mary Louise laugh and head toward the gym. Marshall trails behind with Robert. “Phew, that tuxedo stinks.”

“Shit,” says Robert. “I dumped a whole bottle of Old Spice on it.”

“Yeah, now it smells like cinnamon-spiced cat pee.”

“Shit. I swear it didn’t smell at Goodwill.”

“Mary Louise didn’t say anything?”

“Naw, she’s too nice. Do you think I should change? I’ve got some jeans in the truck. The shirt doesn’t smell bad. It’s my dad’s.”

Marshall weighs Robert’s question. He’d gotten them to the prom. Leann was his date. It didn’t really matter if Robert dressed the part. “Yeah, smelling like cat pee is a really bad idea.”

Robert lopes back to his truck. “Tell Mary Louise I’ll be there in a minute.”

Leann and Mary Louise grab a table close to the dance floor. They wave to Marshall. As he walks up, the band starts playing a fast song. On impulse, Marshall takes both girls by the arm onto the dance floor. When Robert comes in, Leann pulls him into their circle. After a few fast songs, the band slows down. Marshall wants to ask Leann but he has to pretend this isn’t a date. He takes Mary Louise by the hand and bows. “May I have this dance?” Mary Louise giggles and nods. As they dance away from Leann and Robert, Marshall forces himself not look at Leann. He pretends he wants to slow dance with Mary Louise first.

Leann looks over at Robert to see if he is going to ask her to slow dance. As he turns to go back to the table, Leann feels disappointed. She’s enjoying herself. More than she thought she would.

She grabs Robert by his elbow and pulls him onto the dance floor. “Come on.”

Robert moans. “I hate this song.”

“Tough. This is our prom. We’re dancing.”

“Can’t we pretend dance?”

“You want me to pretend slap you?” Leann raises her hand above Robert’s shoulder.

Robert groans. Leann smiles. She doesn’t have to pretend. She’s having fun.

Marshall dances every dance. When he slow dances with Leann, he doesn’t let himself relax. He keeps thinking of things to talk about. What he really wants to do is concentrate on how one of her hands cups his shoulder and the other hooks around his thumb.

One time, when all four of them are dancing together, sort of jumping in a circle, Leann leans in close to Marshall. “Thanks. This is great.” Then she smiles. Marshall stops dancing for a second. He can smell the gardenias, the sweetness hanging between them. He wants to kiss her. Her cheek is an inch from his lips. He stops himself. “You’re welcome,” he says close to her ear. Then he jumps away from how perilously close he is to the edge of her and keeps dancing, glancing over again and again, hoping she didn’t notice that the mask he is wearing had slipped for an instant.

Leann barely hears Marshall say “You’re welcome.”

She’s laughing. For the first time in a long time, she is really laughing. When the band takes a break, she goofs around at their table, thumb wrestling each of them and winning against everyone except Robert, whose big hand engulfs hers. Even then, she pretends to win by using both hands, claiming her two hands are equal in size to his one. Mary Louise suggests they all get their picture taken together and Leann helps arrange the photo so they are all squished in together in one photo. When she poses with Marshall as a couple, she doesn’t think twice about his arm looped in hers.

When the prom ends and Marshall suggests they go to the Whip In, Leann doesn’t hesitate. She wants to keep having fun. Pretty soon this guy named Sam, who everyone but Leann seems to know, is taking their orders. Fifteen minutes later, burgers, fries and sodas fill their table.

Ravenous, sweaty from dancing, Leann guzzles her Dr Pepper and burps so loud both Marshall and Robert choke on their burgers in shock while she and Mary Louise fall over in their seats, holding their sides.

“Holy crap,” said Robert. “That sounded like a whale burp.”

“Do whales burp?” asked Mary Louise.

“If they did, it would sound like that,” said Robert.

Leann smiles. Having Robert make a joke at her expense doesn’t bother her. She sniffs her gardenia corsage. “I wonder where this corsage tradition came from.”

Mary Louise waves her hand in front of her nose and smells her corsage. “To cover up their date’s stinky tuxedo smell.”

“Hey, that’s in the car.”

“Still too close.”

They fall into laughing again. Mary Louise never insulted anyone.

“I have the receipt. I bet I can return it.”

“No way,” says Marshall. “You’ll have to donate it back to Goodwill.”

“You might have to pay them to take it,” Mary Louise adds, and they start laughing again.

Outside the Whip In, Marshall hopes Leann will walk straight to his car but she doesn’t. Mary Louise stops to look at the poster of Tommy Smythe on the window.

“It’s so sad,” says Mary Louise. “He was a really nice kid.”

Leann stops next to her. “Do you think he is dead?”

“I don’t know. It’s been like eight days.”

“Eight days is nothing out here,” says Robert. “He could definitely show up still.”

Marshall doesn’t say anything. Ever since that kid went missing, it seems like Tommy is trying to jinx Marshall’s plans for the evening. First he put the prom in doubt and then he made it more difficult to take Leann to the pull-out because the sheriff drives out there more often. Normally, Marshall wouldn’t wish harm on anyone but, in this case, he really would have preferred Tommy’s body being found. With Mary Louise feeling sad and Leann not moving, Marshall is wondering how to break the spell and move the evening forward.

“Hey, prom pretenders, shall we take our fake dates home?” Marshall doesn’t feel as offhand as he hoped he sounded.

Mary Louise looks at her watch. “Oh yeah, my sisters and I are cooking breakfast for Mom in the morning.”

“Oh crap, I forgot about Mother’s Day,” said Robert.

Leann laughs. “Don’t worry, Robert, if you remember to say anything tomorrow, she’ll be surprised.”

“You think?” said Robert.

“Definitely,” says Leann, laughing. “See you at school on Monday.”

Just like that, Marshall is holding the car door open for Leann. She doesn’t look bothered by the whole Tommy thing. Or the mention of Mother’s Day. He takes a deep breath. Here’s the big moment. He is scared. What if she says no? Except they’d had a good time. Why not go ahead and say it?

“Leann, can I show you something before I take you home?”

“Sure.”

It’s that easy. Minutes later, he is turning his car off 281. Marshall scans the pull-out. No cars. He slows down and heads the car toward one end of the pull-out. In the dark, it looks like he is driving straight into a wall of trees. He eases the car through the cedars, tensing a little until his headlights stretch into the field beyond. No matter how many times he drives through the gauntlet of trees, it’s hard not to imagine a cliff beyond the cedars. He drives about ten feet into the field, turns off the car, and rolls down his window.

“People call this place the Stillwell pull-out.”

As soon as Marshall turns off the car and opens the window, Leann can feel the night air crawl in and cover her. She glances over at Marshall and reaches for the door handle. His head is tipped back and his eyes are closed.

“Close your eyes and listen. It’s amazing.”

She isn’t going to close her eyes. Ever.

“Here.” Marshall reaches over and cranks open Leann’s window.

Leann flinches and presses back into the seat away from his arm.

Something is wrong. Why is she grabbing the door handle and jumping like he is going to hurt her? This isn’t what he wanted. “No wait, Leann. I didn’t bring you here to kiss you. Or do anything. Honest.”

Leann’s hand doesn’t move away from the handle.

“I wanted you to see this place. Hear it. I like to come out here and open the windows and sit and listen.” Marshall stops. He doesn’t want to use this many words to explain this place but he feels like she might open the door and walk away if he doesn’t keep talking.

“There used to be a house straight out from here. A couple of hundred yards. The old Stillwell place. I went out there to look for that kid Tommy Smythe. Right after he disappeared. Not with the search parties. I thought maybe he might be there. I don’t know. Hiding out. No one knows why he disappeared. I thought maybe something bad had happened and he needed to get away. That’s what I would do.”

Leann isn’t saying a word. Marshall can barely hear her breathing. He can smell the gardenias. The sticky sweetness smells out of place in the cedar-tinged night air.

“Anyway, I went out there. He wasn’t there. And neither was the house, hardly. It looked like the wind and animals, even the insects, had taken it back.”

Marshall looks out the window, past Leann’s frozen profile. The misshapen moon drifts out from behind a cloud and catches a bleached rock in its gaze. This isn’t what he wanted to be talking about. Insects. Tommy. Decaying houses.

“Leann, I need to tell you the truth. Is that all right? Can I tell you the truth?” Marshall waits for her to answer but she doesn’t. “I noticed you right away. I saw you on the first day of school last August and I, well, I wanted to bring you here the minute I saw you. I noticed how quiet you were. I thought you would like it here.”

Now that he isn’t angling to get behind her defenses, he’s lost. He thought she would understand this place. He thought she would understand the silence. He thought about starting the car and going back, but he can’t give up. Yet.

“Everybody at Fred High thinks they’re going to be something someday. Like Robert wants to play pro football and Mary Louise wants to be a famous artist. That’s what we’re there for, right? To learn a bunch of stuff so we can be more than who we are. But what if we get jobs and get married and have kids and grandkids and then die? What if all we’re supposed to do is be happy with that? Do you know what I am saying? Leann?”

Leann doesn’t move. Marshall is running out of words. He can’t see what he is doing wrong.

“I mean, I’ll probably go to college and do something, I don’t know, engineering, teaching. But then I come out here and I think, what if I just loved someone? What if that was it? What if all I did was be a good husband. A good provider. What if, when the wind and bugs erased me, that was all I’d done: loved one person? Wouldn’t that be good enough?” Marshall is saying every word he had dreamed of saying to her, but instead of weaving some beautiful picture, they are falling in a mess on the seat of the car.

Marshall reaches his hand toward Leann. She flinches and presses her body closer to the door. Instead of touching her, his hand falls empty on the seat of the car.

Leann isn’t sure if she should open the door and run. She tries to find the edge of her skin where it touches the night air, the seat, and the door. He keeps talking to her, pelting words at her.

Leann is counting each breath of air. In between, she can hear Marshall’s words. “I would love you, I swear.” Six breaths. “I thought you would understand…” Marshall’s voice trails off. Five breaths.

Leann swallows another sip of air and holds it hard inside her.
Love
. The word drips like the remains of semen down the back of her throat. She stares ahead, but in her periphery, she can tell Marshall hasn’t moved. She pushes out the words. “Take me home.”

Marshall looks at her profile. The way the shadows cut across her face, it looks like her mouth and her jawline are lopped off. He wants to believe she hasn’t said those words. If he can’t see her mouth, maybe she hasn’t said them. Maybe it’s the quiet playing tricks on him. Or the wind.

What did he do wrong? He was so careful. He’d picked a girl who is shy and quiet and looks like she needs protection. Isn’t this where he reveals himself and she is supposed to understand him? Isn’t this place meant to bring them together?

Then he hears. “Please.”