Piper (25 page)

“That's child abuse.”

“Not in those days, not here. I snuck her bread and Velveeta cheese and bottles of 7-Up, then crawled up there and slept on the floor with her at night.” I had trouble picturing anyone named Carlisle eating Velveeta and drinking soda pop. The rest of what he was saying totally eluded me. “We told each other stories, how Dad would come back and storm into the house and break all her bottles in the fireplace and make her wait on Ashley.”

“What ever happened to Ashley?”

“I hired an investigator to comb the east coast for her. She probably thought it was Mother looking for her. Anyway, she never surfaced.” He rubbed his thumb along the front edge of the filing cabinet, then turned the corner and rubbed it down the other side. “My fear is she got as addicted and pathetic as Mother.”

“I wouldn't give up.”

He lowered his head. “No, she's gone. Mother chased her away.” I turned and fidgeted with the hard copy on my desk. “You know you remind me of Ashley. The last time I saw her she wasn't much older than you are.” He crossed his ankles and braced his palm under his chin as if he were trying to keep his head from flopping. “Sorry to run on like this.”

“Don't be sorry.”

“There was one important difference.”

“Between me and your sister?”

He stroked the ascot under his throat. “Ashley
wanted
her mother dead.”

He was on the verge of weeping and turned to leave. My eyes followed the back of his green leggings. The legs that used to pirouette on hardwood floors in a New York dance studio quivered.

I was immobilized and unable to manage a goodbye. I didn't understand why he'd told me this any more than I understood why he would dress like a danseur in the middle of a town where boots and Levis were the standard. I was still angry at Dad for trying to save him, and astonished at Dirk for setting him up.

But, for the first time in my life, I'd seen something from inside his skin.

16

The next day after school, Mr. Wendall asked me to stop by and see him, probably about my mid-term grades, which except for American Lit. had gone into the toilet. In fact, I was pretty sure Dad had already called school to ask what was going on. A call from Tom Scanlon would be taken seriously. It wouldn't have surprised me if Dad was in Mr. Wendall's office when I got there, maybe Willard too, and Marge, and the people from the paper, in one of those interventions they do for alcoholics.
Come on, Piper, you're only hurting yourself. We love you, but you've got to pull a three-point-O
.

When I entered his office, Mr. Wendall was alone, chewing gum, his sleeves rolled up, working on a stack of folders with clear plastic covers. The one in his hand was entitled “Mick Jagger and Richard Nixon,” by Jesse Little. The assignment was to compare two personalities in Modern American history. Mr. Wendall looked at his watch the way teachers always looked at their watches, moved a jacket off the chair next to his desk, and angled the chair so I'd be facing him. I sat down and crossed my legs, noticing the mud on my cuffs where the boots had rubbed. He put his pen into the trough of Jesse Little's paper and closed it, as if the contents were confidential. Every idea in there had probably been cribbed from some book in the library. At the high school level, accurate plagiarism was what the teachers wanted.

“Piper, you seem distracted lately.” He looked deeply into my eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Do you mean you don't think you're distracted or you don't want to tell me about it?”

“Both.”

“I didn't go into teaching just to talk about the American Revolution and the Civil War.” He paused to let it sink in. “We're your confidants. Whether it's trouble at home or personal growth issues, we're here for you.” He was speaking in code. Personal growth issues meant my sex life, which I wasn't going to talk about with any teacher, but I wondered if I'd been that obvious. “I know how hard it must have been losing your mom.”

“I thought this was about school.”

“Well, it is. Indirectly.”

“Do I have to stay?”

“You don't have to, but …”

“Then I gotta meet someone. Thanks for your time, Mr. Wendall. I'll pick up the pace.”

I got up and scooted the chair back to where it belonged. I didn't know if this was supposed to be a coming on chat or a coming out one, but I wasn't going to stick around to find out. It would probably cost me on the grade for my paper, but “FDR and Eleanor: Who Wore the Pants?” was hardly destined for publication anyway.

My face was still hot as I walked toward the parking lot on my way to the paper. It was Two DTP (“Days To Publication” in Dad's lexicon), which meant that we'd be finishing the galleys for the back pages today. Dad always saved page one until the last minute in case something big broke, which in Stampede was not often, unless you counted the School Board's decision to cut band and drill team expenses or the City Council's directive expanding recycling to cover plastics. I knew there would be hot copy waiting on my desk when I arrived.

There was a big huddle in the second aisle of the parking lot, which usually meant a fight. This was where the grudges that developed in the hallways or lunchroom were settled, as in,
Meet me in the parking lot after school, you chickenshit
. This one wasn't a fight or at least not yet. Rozene Raymond was in the middle of the circle in her brown Corolla, with the engine idling. Condon Bagmore was sitting on the hood, leaning back against the windshield. The car was trapped in a web of restless high-schoolers, mostly guys, but also some girls, punkers with rainbow hair and tattoos on their ankles.

“I'll move when you tell me I can sit inside,” Bagmore said. The heels of his boots were braced against the top of the hood and I was sure he was going to scratch the paint.

Every time Bagmore issued a challenge, people in the crowd whispered “Oohs” and “Hey mans” in support. Someone yelled, “Scalp her pussy!”

The window on the driver's side was rolled down and Rozene was hugging the outside of the door with her arm. “Honestly, Condon. I'm going to ask you one more time and then I'm going to leave it to centrifugal force.”

“Did you say cunnilingus?”

People laughed.

I cut my way through to the front. “She told you to get your butt off her car, Bagmore. What part of that don't you understand?”

“The harlot's daughter,” he said.

If I had a bat I would have swung it at him. If I carried a switchblade I would have pulled it. All I had was my rage. I ran at him and jumped, thrusting my shoulder, but my legs banged into the fender, sapping the energy from my charge, so that instead of cold cocking him all I delivered was a spank. The windshield wiper came off in Bagmore's hand and he speared it into the air, laughing.

“Ole!”

As I was rubbing my kneecaps, Martin Miller, the veterinarian's colossal son whom everyone called Lenny because of his resemblance to the Steinbeck character, stepped out of the crowd. “You okay, Piper?” he said, ignoring Bagmore.

“Yeah, fine.” God, was I glad to see him. I didn't have a follow-up to my futile charge.

Lenny stooped over to speak to Rozene. “Did I hear you say you want to go?”

Rozene nodded her head and put both hands on the top of the steering wheel.

“You guys in front clear out,” Lenny said. He didn't yell. He said it about the same as if he'd asked what time the bus was coming, but people started backing away.

Bagmore hugged the broken wiper against his chest. He didn't have a good record against Lenny. Bagmore had once challenged him to fisticuffs because Lenny had the audacity to ask Bagmore to lighten up when he had a red-headed freshman kid named Ed Mooney cornered in the phone booth next to the bookstore. The fight was a non-event. Lenny palmed Bagmore's head with one hand like it was a basketball and held him far enough away so that Bagmore's swings landed harmlessly against his arm.

“You just drive out of here,” Lenny said.

Rozene was trembling and seemed uncertain.

“Do what he says,” I told her.

“Come with me.”

“I've got to work.”

“Please, I need to talk. I'll drop you off.”

As I walked around the car under Lenny's protective gaze, people cleared an aisle for me. Rozene leaned over and unlocked the door. Bagmore glared at me through the windshield like a monkey from his cage. I thought his face was going to break out in zits as I took the seat he'd been vying for. Rozene patted me on the leg. “Thanks.”

Lenny leaned into the window again. “Just drive normally, okay?”

She returned her hands to the wheel and I watched the tendons flex in her forearms. “What's normal?” she whispered.

“Burn rubber,” I said, and we both had to bite our lips to keep from laughing.

I couldn't hear what Lenny was saying, but Bagmore handed him the wiper blade, which Lenny gave to Rozene, who handed it to me. Then he grabbed Bagmore by the front of his zip-up windbreaker, lifted his butt up off the hood, and held him in the air. Bagmore grimaced like Lenny had gotten some skin twisted up with the jacket.

“Go ahead, Rozene,” Lenny said, with the unflappable tone of a man whose lot in life was to lift overturned cars off pinned drivers and carry children down the ladders of burning buildings.

As the Corolla moved forward, Bagmore's butt, then his heels dragged across the windshield and out of sight only to reappear momentarily in the rear window. I stuck my head out the window and watched Lenny lowering Bagmore to the asphalt. Bagmore stumbled backwards a few steps, but Lenny steadied him and smoothed out the wrinkles in his jacket. I'd always thought I wanted Lenny's power, but now I wished I had his restraint.

When Rozene was about to pull up in front of the
Herald
, I ducked down in the seat and waved her on. “Let's go to the airport.”

I stayed down while she motored along the storefronts on Commercial in case Dad had gone over to the drugstore or struck up a conversation with someone on the boardwalk. While we were stopped at the only light in Stampede, Rozene rolled down her window. “Hey, Dirk! Where you been hiding?”

Oh, Jesus, Rozene, not now
. From his voice I guessed he must have been in the crosswalk, and he was coming closer. I scrunched down further with my head against the floor and my butt up like an ostrich.

“Hi, where you going?” Dirk said. “Nice wheels.” Now he was standing next to the car and I could tell from the drop in his voice that he'd seen me. Why hadn't I said something about Rozene when I was with him last night? “Is that you, Piper?”

Dammit
.

“We're going for a drive,” Rozene added, cheerily.

I uncoiled myself and crawled back onto the seat like a slug. My face was warm, probably red. “Hi, Dirk.”

He seemed disappointed, confused. Maybe he thought if I hadn't been there he could have gotten a ride with Rozene. There was an awkward silence while he probably wondered whether we were going to invite him along and make it a threesome.

“Green light,” Rozene said. And she pulled away, leaving him standing in the middle of the street.

I leaned my head back on the seat and closed my eyes, feeling very much a traitor. After all my preaching at Dirk to come clean, I was the orthodontist with crooked teeth.

We took Highway 2 to Monroe, then Sultan and Startup. Rozene's cast was off and she was acting giddy again. “We need elevation,” she said. The defroster couldn't keep up with the heat I was throwing off from the twin engines of anxiety and arousal, and every time the windshield fogged up she'd open her window and let the wind flutter her hair. We were heading toward Stevens Pass. The Jimminy Cricket on my shoulder that Catholics called conscience was shrinking. On the way back from the billboards last night he was as mammoth as Lenny Miller and I'd vowed to have a heart-to-heart talk with Dad about the pickle Dirk was in. Dad knew the law and, better yet, he knew the people in the Prosecutor's Office. If anyone could lead Dirk out of this morass, it was Dad. I was in way over my head and right now I wished Dirk hadn't even told me. Knowledge always carried power in its frontseat and pain in the backseat.

Rozene put her
Evita
tape in. Madonna was singing “Don't Cry for Me, Argentina,” and snow was beginning to dust the discarded cigarette butts, beer cans and other man-made detritus on the shoulder of the road. My conscience had shrunk to a midget and if we didn't turn around soon it was going to fit comfortably under my thumb. She turned off on a spur road that had been plowed wide enough for one lane.

“Do we have chains?”

“I won't go in that far,” she said. Rozene wasn't just pastry and sweetmeat. Behind the wheel of her car, she was a bulldog. She set her jaw and her nose flared as she glared through the windshield. If her ancestors could make it through the Bering Strait in canoes, she could do this.

Although the road was still fairly flat, the snow must have been two or three feet deep and the boughs of the pine trees were lazy with it. I couldn't help but think what could happen to us. Worst case, we'd run out of gas and freeze to death while trying to combine our body heat in the backseat. There were worse ways to go. On a wide turn that had a lookout down to the Skykomish River, she left the friendly troughs of the spur road and headed for the vista. The Corolla rocked and bumped, then slowed until the tires finally lost their grip and whined like tomcats on the make.

“Well, how's this?” she said, pointing toward the river.

“It'll have to do. We're stuck.”

I had two cigarettes left in a pack I'd rolled up and stuck into the breast pocket of my jeans jacket for emergencies, and I offered one of them to Rozene. I didn't know about her, but I needed something to calm my nerves. She hesitated, then took the cigarette and punched in the lighter. I pulled out the ashtray and noticed it was clean except for a layer of quarters.