Learning to Swear in America (17 page)

The cooler had beer and a variety of organic sodas. Yuri grabbed a can labeled “naturally sweetened lemonade,” shook off the ice water from the cooler, and popped the tab. Naturally sweetened his ass.

“Mike,” Lennon said, pointing at the guy by the cooler. “Paul.” He pointed at the other guy. “This is Yuri, the Russian astrophysics genius who hangs out here on occasion.”

“Hey,” Paul said. Yuri shook hands with both guys.

“Your dad is cooking hot dogs?” Yuri said. “Doesn’t seem like something your parents would let you eat.”

“They use waste meats in them, and we’re opposed to waste.”

“Yeah, every time they have a picnic they save the Third World,” Mike said.

“We can have whatever someone else doesn’t want,” Lennon said. “Kind of like my love life.”

“Food’s ready!” Mr. Collum called.

They sat at the picnic table and ate. Yuri stole glances at Lennon, seated at the end. The pinch around his eyes was tighter. But mostly he watched Mike and Paul. They bantered easily with everyone at the table except him—apparently he was as foreign to
them as they were to him. He tried to think of something to say but drew a complete blank. He thought they were trying, too. Paul looked up at him once, opened his mouth, then shifted his eyes to Mary and pointed. “Ketchup.” Mary passed him the bottle, and Paul didn’t look at him again.

“It was nice of you all to come over and pretend you’re not worried about me,” Lennon said, balling his napkin and pitching it at the side of Mike’s face. “But my life sucks, and it’s not gonna stop sucking. So the Friends-of-Lennon Club may have to agree to disband.”

“I don’t have many friends,” Yuri said. “But I’m pretty sure that’s not what they do.” Everyone looked at him. “Disband,” he said. “I thought it means ‘separate.’ Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” Mrs. Collum said, “you said something just right.” And she leaned across the table, put a hand on each of his cheeks, and gave his head a squeeze.

“Not too hard, Mom,” Dovie said. “Don’t squeeze the brains out.”

“
Pssshhh
,” Paul said, making a brain-squirt sound.

“Even at my pity party my friends get the attention,” Lennon said.

Friends
. They were friends—Lennon had just said so.

“I’m smart and funny and I know the dialogue from
The Godfather
by heart,” Lennon said. Mary and Dovie exchanged a glance. “She didn’t want to go out with me because of the chair.”

“Well, duh,” Paul said. “It’s an ugly-ass chair.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I wouldn’t date you, either. It ruins your T-shirt’s classy effect.”

“You know,” Yuri said, “what it needs are accessories.”

“A cup holder?” Lennon said, exhaling derisively. “You’re gonna change my life with a cup holder?”

“I was thinking jet power,” Yuri said.

Lennon’s eyes popped.

“Why should your chair not be customized? It’s only normal thing here,” he said, waving a hand toward the back of the purple house, then flushing. He probably shouldn’t have said that. But Mr. and Mrs. Collum were beaming.

“Dude,” Mike said, extending a fist, “the Friends-of-Lennon Club has a mission.” Yuri bumped his fist. He was now a dude.

“I’ve got some stuff in the truck,” Paul said. “Hey, Mrs. C, can we use your craft supplies?”

“Of course!” Delinda Collum said. “You know where everything is. You boys help yourselves.”

Paul grinned at him.
You boys
. Yuri had never been one of “you boys” before. Ever.

“Wait,” Lennon said suspiciously. “What are you guys going to do?”

“None of your business,” Mike said. “You’re not a member of the Friends-of-Lennon Club.”

“That’s because I’m
Lennon
!”

Mike shrugged. Paul motioned to Yuri, and they walked together to a white truck parked in front of the house. Paul pulled a toolbox out and handed it to him, then grabbed some lumber and metal
piping and hauled it to the backyard. Yuri walked beside him, bouncing the toolbox up and down. It was heavy, and felt good in his hands.

They dumped the materials in the yard and looked at what they had. Lennon rolled over to inspect it.

“You can’t make anything with that pile of crap,” he said.

“That’s the spirit!” Paul said, chucking him in the shoulder.

“Ow.”

Mike motioned Dovie and Mary over, and they huddled, whispering for a moment.

“You know it’s
my
chair?” Lennon said.

“You gotta learn to share, man,” Mike said.

Dovie went to work with a pencil on a thin piece of wood, then Mike took it into the garage, and the sound of power tools and smell of sawdust settled over the yard.

“Am I getting jet packs?” Lennon asked.

Yuri shook his head. “We don’t have right equipment. But we’re doing something else.”

“It’s possible that you may want to dismantle this eventually,” Mary said, “but it’ll be fun for now.”

“Oh, crap,” Lennon said, but he was smiling.

“Is this okay?” Dovie said, holding up a small can of paint.

“What is it?”

“Glow in the dark,” Dovie said.

“Why would I want …”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Mr. Collum called from the garage. “Could be a useful safety feature.”

“Eh,” Lennon said. “Just don’t write ‘Lennon sucks’ with it.”

“Well, shoot,” Dovie said. “Plan’s off, everybody!”

“Ha-ha,” Lennon said. He leaned over, watching as Dovie painted his spokes. Mary crawled under the chair and Mike helped from the outside, and Paul and Mr. Collum and Yuri worked on the back.

Mrs. Collum motioned them all in for a photo when they were done. “Ta-da!” she said.

“Anybody want to explain what you did to my personal property?” Lennon said. “While I was
sitting
in it?”

“Okay,” Mike said. “We had limited equipment, remember.”

“And ability,” Lennon said.

“Ouch,” Mike said, clasping his hands over his heart.

“We did the basics,” Dovie said. “Glow-in-the-dark spokes, bat wings …”

“And a bat signal!” Mrs. Collum said, clasping her hands together.

Lennon looked at Yuri. “Take me with you to Moscow.”

Yuri grinned. “Look at your wings first. Is very ingenious.”

Mike pushed a handle, and two wings of black fabric stretched on a piping frame swung forward. Lennon took the handle and pumped it back and forth, making the wings flap.

“I actually kinda like these,” he said. “I mean, they’ve gotta go, but I like them.”

“Nice on a hot day,” Paul said.

“Show him the bat signal!” Mrs. Collum said.

“Press this button,” Mary said. Lennon gave her a deeply
suspicious look, then pushed it. A circle of light appeared faintly in the shadow of the trees, the bat outline dark in the middle.

“It’ll be better at night,” Dovie said.

“We mounted a flashlight under the chair and angled it forward,” Mike said. “You can switch out the cover if you want, and project different images.”

“Everything except class,” Lennon said.

“Your words, they cut like a knife,” Paul said, staggering around with his hands over his belly.

Lennon grinned, wheeled his chair hard around, and cut circles in the grass, his wings flapping like mad. “You guys are idiots,” he said, rolling back to them. “Thank you.”

“Hey, you want to go to the movies?” Mike said. “They’re showing a …”

“Vampire film!” Paul said. “Dude, halfway through you could …”

“Unfold my wings!” Lennon said. “Ha! I’m in.”

“You coming, Yuri?” Mike said.

For a moment Yuri almost said yes to going to a vampire movie with these guys. It could be fun. Who knew? He might even come back with a tattoo. “Oh, no thanks. But have fun.”

“You can go if you want,” Dovie said, but the guys were already around to the front of the house.

“No,” he said. “But I’m glad you invited me today.”

She put a hand on his forearm. “Thanks for coming. I worry about Len sometimes. He gets depressed.”

“About wheelchair?”

“About the chair, about high school students’ reading habits, about how fast cottage cheese expires.” She shrugged. “He’s kind of aimless sometimes. Sarcastic, but aimless.”

She picked up a stack of plates, and he grabbed the ketchup and mustard bottles and followed her into the house.

“He seemed happier when he left.”

“Yeah, he’ll be okay for now. Growing up is just hard, you know? He wants to leave home, but he needs a better job first.”

She set the plates on the counter and Yuri put the bottles beside them. Mary came in with some glasses.

“Hey,” Dovie said. “Distract Mom if she comes in, okay? I want to show Yuri something in my bedroom.”

“Sure,” Mary said, opening the refrigerator to put the condiments away.

Dovie took Yuri’s fingertips and led him down the hall, past the computer by the clothes washer, and the brush of her skin was the sexiest thing he had ever known.
Dovie’s bedroom. Was there any chance that it was customary to end American picnics with sex? It would be a fine tradition.

They stepped through the doorway. The walls were hand painted with huge flowers, old-fashioned things from overgrown cottage gardens. The scale made him feel like a bug. A very, very horny bug. In the middle, Dovie’s bed was arched with white garden lattice covered with paper flowers.

“It’s beautiful,” Yuri said.

“I wanted to feel like a fairy,” Dovie said. “Lennon says it’s a firetrap.”

Yuri turned in a circle, then looked up. “You have little stars on ceiling.”

“Yeah, I did them with glow-in-the-dark paint. That’s what I put on Lennon’s spokes.”

Yuri squirmed, trying not to point out the obvious. It was a pretty room, completely individual, and Dovie’s talent was evident—but he couldn’t help himself. “Stars are wrong.”

“What?”

“They’re not just wrong hemisphere. It’s as if you painted them randomly.”

“I did. I was just going for pretty.” He gaped at her. “Yes,” she said. “My fairy-princess bedroom has an appallingly low level of academic rigor.” He nodded. It was true.

“Sit.” She pointed to the bed. He sat.

Dovie went to the closet and came back with a ceramic piece, glazed in a profusion of brilliant colors. She sat beside him, making the mattress bounce.

“I don’t know what it is, but it’s beautiful,” he said.

“It’s a cookie jar I made in art class. See? The lid lifts off.”

It was a bed, with flowers and vines interwoven through the brass headboard, and a whole jungle on the bedspread, all done in clay. It was a verdant, writhing explosion of life, in colors stolen from parrots and tropical fish. Dovie lifted the bedspread off to reveal the cavity within, then replaced it with a clink.

Yuri touched a bird’s tiny wing, scarlet and perfect. “It’s beautiful. It’s … really good, Dovie. You have serious talent.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But it didn’t make it into the art show.”

He stared at her.

“The teacher said it’s too colorful, that I need to ‘prune my palette’—so some elements are more prominent. So the eye knows where to go.”

“But your result is amazing.” He peered close to look at the detail—the stamens in a lily twining around the bedpost, a ladybug crawling up a vine. “Surely other students didn’t make anything better than this?”

“No,” Dovie said acidly. “They didn’t. Besides, I titled the piece
Dreamland
. You’re supposed to be able to dream wildly, right?”

Yuri didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.

“The girl in my art class that I don’t like? Her cookie jar made it into the show, because she’s most improved. She made a box. A
box
, Yuri.”

“I’m sorry.”

Dovie put the cookie jar back in her closet and stood, leaning against its door. “I grew up in a purple house with hippie parents—it’s safe, you know? It’s fun. And I’m going to have to go out on my own someday pretty soon. And the world is already telling me to be less. To
prune my palette
.” Her eyes were wet. “I don’t want to do that.” She smiled weakly, and a tear spilled down her cheek. “Len doesn’t want to stay here, and I guess I don’t want to leave.”

She pushed away from the closet.

“It doesn’t matter anyway if the meteor hits, right?”

He stood. “Asteroid won’t hit.”

She wiped her hand across her cheek. “Then I guess I’ll have to grow up.”

They walked out to Dovie’s car, picking up Mary and saying good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Collum on the way. Yuri settled into the lumpy backseat.

“Mary,” he said. “I want Dovie to teach me to swear, and she says I’m not ready.”

“Hmm.” Mary squinted back at him thoughtfully.

“It’s not safe to know how to swear but not how to deal with people,” Dovie said. “It’s like walking around with your mouth loaded and the safety off.”

“Yeah,” Mary said. “He did really well today, though.”

Yuri beamed and shot Dovie a look.

“Yeah,” Dovie said. “Keep up the social mingling and we’ll teach you some bad words. Human interaction is a precursor. Get it? Pre-curser?” And she accelerated back toward his hotel.

Dovie dropped him off in the restaurant lot, and he walked to the hotel, hands shoved in his pockets. It was late enough that the air was cooling a little, and he could feel it on his neck. No tie. He reached the building.