Revolutions of the Heart (10 page)

“The law is wrong. How can you have different rights for different people? Is that American?”

“The law—”

Rob pounded the broad ends of the silverware in his fist against the countertop. “All right, it’s the law! Then the only option we have is to make them so goddamn uncomfortable they don’t want to come to Summer Lake and spear. The town and the four resorts on that lake depend on business from fishermen. How many fish will be left to catch this summer if they’re speared while spawning? How many?”

Elaine took the silverware out of her husband’s hand. “I would guess that the fish population is in more danger from the motorboats and bad septic tanks at those four resorts than from three days of spearing,” she said.

Rob looked at Cory, Mike, and Elaine in turn. “I’m all alone on this, aren’t I?”

“Don’t do it, Rob,” Mike said softly. “Your mother—”

Rob slapped the counter. “Don’t say that. She’s not here and she has nothing to do with this.”

The dryer buzzer sounded from the basement and Cory excused herself, happy to escape the anger. She had seen and heard enough.

The argument continued as she dressed in her room. Mike was right and Rob was wrong, but she was hesitant to join the fight. In the days following her mother’s death, they had all been balancing too much—emotions, memories, emptiness, and the tiring business of living together. Cory feared that if everyone took sides and started fighting, the fragile balance would topple. So when Mike and Rob started in on the subject of spearing protests, she usually left the room or even found a reason to leave the house.

*

“He adopted you, didn’t he?” asked Sasha. “That means he decided years ago that he always wants you in his life.”

“What if he remarries? Where do I fit in? What if he and Rob start hating each other so much because of this spearing business that they turn away from each other? Where does that leave me?”

“At home with Mike. At least until you’re eighteen.”

“The saddest thing about it all is that they really love each other. But they have this difference, this huge difference, and they can’t stop fighting about it. They could take a lesson from you and Tony.”

“What have we done?”

“You’re a flaming liberal, and he’s a country redneck. You get along.”

“He’s not, really.”

“Only because of you.”

Sasha picked up a magazine from the floor and began flipping through it. “Oh, sad.” She pointed to a swimsuit ad. “Are these women even human?” She flipped a few more pages. “It’s too bad they can’t reconcile things the way Antonio and I do.”

“Why couldn’t they? What’s the secret?”

“Sex.”

“Be serious.”

Sasha ripped out a perfume insert and waved it around. “This stuff smells like my grandmother. And I
am
serious.” She smiled. “Anything else you want to know?”

“When?”

“At night, mostly, like the rest of the world.”

“I mean, when did you start?”

“Remember the spaghetti supper and how we had that fight? That night. We fight so easily sometimes. And when we were driving to my house after leaving the senior center, Tony got really down about who he is and who I am. Do you suppose they’ll ever get back with the pizza?”

“Right now I don’t care. What happened?”

“It’s sort of like what you were talking about, wanting to find something to make the differences not matter. He was going on about them so much, about how his family is pure blue-collar and my dad is the plant’s deputy v.p., how he’s never been out of Wisconsin and I’ve traveled all over. It went on all the way home. He’s right, of course. Sometimes there is this huge gulf.”

“So now you share something.”

“Don’t disapprove, Cory.”

“Do I look like I disapprove?”

“It’s oozing out of every pore.”

“Sash, I don’t know what I think. Yes I do, okay? I think it’s scary. But right now I think everything is a bit scary. Nothing’s simple anymore.” She stretched out a leg and prodded Sasha’s hip with her foot. “Including our Saturday night doubles with you two. Now I know we should leave early. You idiot, couldn’t you have found a better way to not fight?”

Sasha rifled through the magazine pages. She looked up. “Don’t be so judgmental.”

“I’m just asking.”

When the next page slipped through her fingers and fell open, Sasha tapped it with her fingers. “Look at this, Cory. This is it.”

The black-and-white magazine picture was an advertisement for jeans. A bare-chested, slender young man wearing tight jeans had his finger hooked through a belt loop of his companion’s equally tight jeans. The young woman’s hands were resting on his chest.

“They’re too gorgeous to be real,” said Cory. “Nice and steamy, though. Do you suppose they are permanently joined at the pelvis?”

Sasha jabbed at the photo. “This is how I feel when I’m with Tony. This is how terrific it is to be with him. Cory, here’s my life: I live with a stepmother only ten years older than me; I hardly ever hear from my own mother; I’m fifteen pounds overweight, and I get pimples on my butt. When I’m with Tony, though, I feel as good as this photo. About everything. And he does too. Nothing else makes me feel that good. I will not believe it’s wrong.”

“Sash, I hear you. But I still think it’s a scary way to feel better about life.”

“Do you have another answer?”

“No answer at all.”

Sasha found another perfumed insert, leaned forward, and waved it across Cory’s space. “Aren’t you going to ask me what it’s like?”

“I’m not totally ignorant.”

“Not the least bit curious?”

“Obviously you want to tell me. Okay, Sasha, I’ll ask. What’s it like? Did it hurt? Do you leave the lights on? Does Tony make funny noises?”

“I’m not sure I want to tell you now.”

Cory squeezed her soda can until it snapped and bent. “I’m sorry, Sash. I know I’m not being a very good friend, but it’s hard sometimes to be happy about other people’s happiness.”

“I’ll forgive you.”

“I do want to know one thing: are you at least being careful?” Headlights panned the room as a car turned into the driveway.

“Usually.”

Cory moaned. “Stupid, stupid.”

“There’s nothing rational about any of it, okay? You can’t plan everything. After this winter, you should know that.” She closed the magazine, and it slid off her lap. “Do you still have your stash?”

“My what?”

“The condoms. Rubbers, Tony’s dad calls them. I hate that.”

A back door opened, and the boys entered the house. They were singing the chorus of a pizza commercial.

“You can have them all. They’re just taking up space in my dresser drawer. I’ve been waiting to find out who was doing that stuff and dump them in his locker.”

“At least he stopped.”

“Are you coming?” Tony called from the kitchen. “Be right there,” Sasha called back. They rose from their chairs and picked up their soda cans.

“I suppose he stopped because of Mom’s dying.”

“I’m surprised he had that much feeling.”

Cory put her arm around Sasha. “Take them all.”

“I don’t need that many; it’s not like we’re sex machines. And you should keep some, just in case.”

“No. Mac and I don’t need that now.”

Tony met them in the kitchen doorway. “Get in here. What’s keeping you? Been talking about me, I bet.”

Cory and Sasha smiled at each other. “Not exactly,” said Sasha and she tugged on the frayed collar of his sweatshirt. “Just about the things you like to wear.”

After eating too much pizza and losing at cards, Cory fell asleep during the video the boys had rented. Mac gently nudged her awake.

She sat up abruptly and pretended to be alert. “What have I missed?”

“Half a dozen dope dealers have been shot, all of them black. They’ll probably start on the Hispanics next. I think I’d like to not watch any more.”

“Let’s go then. By the time I take you home and say good night, I’ll be pushing curfew.”

Tony and Sasha were sitting together on the sofa and didn’t protest their departure. They seldom did, though Cory and Mac rarely stayed late. Cory now understood why.

She parked in Barb’s driveway. A powerful spotlight illuminated the ground in a huge circle. “Either I take out that light with a rock,” said Mac, “or we don’t do more than a quick kiss.”

“We never do more than a quick kiss. And that’s fine.”

He set her hair in place behind her ear and traced her jaw line with his thumb. “Do you know what Tony told me tonight?”

“That they’re having sex.”

He put his hands in his lap. “Yeah. I guess some people like to play with fire. But we all do that in different ways.”

“How do we do it?”

“You have to ask?”

She didn’t. Whores and injuns.

He began humming in a rhythmic pattern of rising and falling notes. Cory suspected it was a drum song. Barb’s husband, who sang with a drum circle, was teaching him. “Mac, is it hard on you having a white girlfriend?”

“Not when it’s Cory K.”

“Straight answer, please.”

“I do hear about it from some of the other kids. I was surprised. I’ve never lived anyplace before where such a clear race line was drawn.”

“What do they say?”

“Aren’t Indian girls good enough for me? Am I trying to be white? That sort of thing. It was especially hard when you were getting those notes.”

“At least that’s stopped.”

“I wonder why. Maybe he, or she, just got scared of getting caught. No, it’s not really hard, Cory. I suppose if I had actually planned it, maybe I wouldn’t have picked a popular white girl whose life is running upside down.”

She took his hand.

“I didn’t plan a darn thing. And I’m happy. Now, how about that quick kiss?”

A late-night drive home on a country road had long been Cory’s favorite way to end the day. Thoughts came tumbling out of nowhere while the radio pulled in music and talk from distant places. Tonight a radio shrink out of Oklahoma was fixing things between a woman and her mother. “Talk to each other!” the doctor urged. “Talk and then talk some more!” Cory hit the scan button and let it run. Spring training baseball, news, music, more baseball—all in four-second patches. She turned off the radio.

“Talk to each other!” she said, mimicking the radio doctor. Nice advice, but she couldn’t do it, not now. What talking she and her mother had done would have to last a lifetime. No more conversations by the lake or on the porch or in the glow of a dying fire. But already she needed more—needed to know more, to hear more from her mother. Cory made a mental list of things she wished she could ask. Will Rob and Mike stop fighting? Is Sasha being stupid? Will Mac want to play with fire? How old were you the first time? Was it with my father?

The unanswered questions hung suspended in the rumbling rhythm of the speeding car.

Rob was sitting on the deck when she returned home. He patted the empty chair next to his, and she sat down. “You’re back early.”

“It’s nearly eleven and that’s my curfew. How are things here?”

“We quit fighting, if that’s what you mean. Even played some gin. I won two bucks.” He put his feet up on the deck rail. “It’s great out, isn’t it? You can really feel some spring warmth in that breeze. Six more days and it’s April. Look at that sky, Cory. You never see a sky like that anywhere but around here. Gosh, I’m glad to be home.”

Cory didn’t want to dampen her brother’s spirits. Not all that long ago she would have let him have it with both barrels. Would have let him know everything she thought about everything he did. But something had been sucked out of her when her mother died and she was mute. So, she didn’t accuse him of stupidity or bigotry or simply being wrong, but just sat quietly alongside her cheerful brother and together they stared up at the star-dense sky.

A gust of wind blew across them. Cory zipped up her jacket and shoved her hands in her pocket. “Darn,” she whispered.

“What’s wrong?”

Cory pulled out the ring of motel keys. “I left work in a hurry. Mr. B. was threatening to tell me about his father’s surgery. I got out as fast as I could.”

“Bartleby is a good guy. He’s on our side.”

“Rob, there shouldn’t be sides. You must know how Mom—”

“Shut up, Cory.” He gripped the arm of her chair and shook it. “I wish you and Mike wouldn’t bring her into this.” They sat again in silence. A nighthawk flew across the moon, creating a momentary eclipse of the pearl white circle.

“When he mentions her, he’s only trying to stop me by laying on a guilt trip. He’s trying to turn the protest into another disappointment to her, just another one of Robbie’s screwups.”

“You haven’t been a screwup,” Cory said softly.

“You’re seven years younger and don’t know half of what’s gone on in this family.” He counted off on his fingers. “There was my suspension in eighth grade.”

“I never knew about that. For what?”