Superpowers (20 page)

FRIDAY

Scott hadn't worn the suit since his cousin Rachel's wedding in April, and he seemed to have gained weight since then. That, along with everyone staring at his yarmulke, was making him sweat profusely.

It didn't help that Charlie had been sobbing quietly since they'd come into the church. This morning he had told Scott he wasn't sure he could come. He wanted to be here for Jack, he said, but he didn't know if he could handle it. Scott thought Charlie was being melodramatic, but the girls were all treating him like it was his father that had died. Mary Beth sat next to him, her hand on his shoulder, whispering in his ear. Scott didn't understand. It was sad, but they barely knew Jack's father. Charlie was being disrespectful of those with genuine grief.

A woman in the pew in front of him turned to look at Charlie, and her eyes fell on Scott, who forced a smile. The woman looked like someone who crocheted and made preserves when she wasn't out milking cows. She made a face and turned to say something to her husband, who after a look back dug a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Scott. Scott started to hand the handkerchief to Charlie, but the man grabbed his hand. He was not rough, but the skin of his hand was, and Scott was aware of his own smooth hands. He had never held a shovel or a hatchet and he had never worked on an engine. At home he raked leaves a couple of times a year, and afterward there were always blisters on the webbing between his thumbs and forefingers.

The man pointed to Scott's forehead and released his hand. Scott wiped sweat from his eyes, his lips, his neck. When he was finished—he wanted to wipe his armpits, but he didn't think it was appropriate—he would have offered the handkerchief back, but the man and his wife had turned to face the front again.

When the casket arrived everyone in the church turned toward the back. Jack was there with the family. Scott hadn't seen him since it happened; he looked terrible. He was thin and there were lines on his face and his hair had gone gray in spots. He and his brother walked on either side of his mother and followed the casket in. Jack's mother wore a black dress and a black hat, and she looked as though she'd decided that there'd been enough crying for now and she wasn't going to start up again. Jack looked as though he had been unplugged from everything, as if he were operating on battery power and might run down at any second.

The funeral was long enough that by the end of it Scott would have had to wring out the handkerchief in order to keep using it. In the parking lot afterward Charlie sat on the bumper of Jack's truck while the girls made concerned noises.

"Are you up to going to the cemetery?" Harriet asked him.

"I don't think so." Charlie looked at Scott. "I don't think it's a good idea."

Scott had been seeing a lot of looks like that in the month since Cecilia had thrown him out of a moving car and driven over him repeatedly while throwing Molotov cocktails at his head. That was how it had felt, at first, so he hadn't really thought about the weird vibe that Jack and Charlie shared with the girls downstairs. Lately, though, he had wondered what was going on that they didn't want him to know about. Had his return put a stop to some orgiastic club? Were they afraid he might find the bodies they'd buried in the backyard?

Charlie made an explosive sound with his nose, and it took Scott a moment to realize that he was laughing. "I'm sorry," he said when he caught his breath. "He— I was just thinking of something funny."

"Are you feeling better?" It came out grumpier than Scott had intended, but he
was
grumpy, so he didn't feel too bad about it.

"A little bit. But I'm not going to the cemetery."

"Jack will understand," Caroline said.

"Just take care of yourself," Harriet said. "We'll see you back at the house."

"You can drive the rest of us, can't you, Scott?" Mary Beth asked.

"I can drive," Scott said. "But I don't think it's all right for Charlie to stay behind. Jack's our friend. Whatever your problem is, you should get over it and come along."

"It's not something I can just get over," Charlie said. "I know you think I'm being dramatic, Scott. But other people's grief is hard for me to deal with."

"Yeah? I'll bet Jack's grief is tough for him to deal with. We're supposed to be there to support him when things like this happen."

"Charlie
is
here," Mary Beth said.

"This is the easy part. The cemetery is hard. That's where it hits you. That's where it becomes real. When Jack looks around, I don't think he should have to wonder where you are."

"Scott," Charlie said, "I know what you're saying. But it's precisely because the cemetery is harder that I can't go. Maybe I'm a little unhinged today, I don't know. But I can't deal with it."

"Jack knows how Charlie can get," Caroline said.

The girls flanked Charlie, as if protecting him from Scott. Scott was so angry he felt sick. It wasn't the cemetery anymore—it was the weird solidarity between Charlie and the girls. The exclusion he'd felt since coming back to the house. It was his own fault, he knew. He'd moved into his own world, just him and Cecilia, and then that world had ended.

"Scott," Charlie said. "Please. Will you drive the girls out there?"

"Fine," Scott said and turned to walk back to his Saturn. Moving day was August 14. Scott, Charlie, and Jack were supposed to move to a new place on West Washington Avenue. He wondered if it was too late to get out of the lease and get a place of his own.

_______

Mary Beth walked into her room wearing nothing but a towel, but Charlie didn't even sit up to notice. He lay on her bed wearing the khakis and T-shirt he'd thrown on after showering, a pillow over his head. Mary Beth knew he was tired, and she wondered if he was asleep.

"I'm not asleep." Charlie lifted the pillow and sat up to tuck it under his head. "I think I'm too tired to sleep. There was so much . . . I've gotten used to keeping it all under control. I didn't like that."

Mary Beth sat on the bed next to him. "Is Scott still angry?"

"He was when he left," Charlie said. "He's driving around somewhere. I think we should tell him."

"I don't think we should tell anybody," Mary Beth said.

"We already have," Charlie said. "Jack's sister knows."

"The one with the crush on you?" Mary Beth poked him in the stomach.

"Grace, yeah. Although I think she's over me now. She was doing it as much to annoy Jack as anything else." He sighed. "Poor kid."

Mary Beth said nothing, but she was thinking about Wanda. Charlie must know about Wanda by now, but he had never said anything. Maybe he thought she was crazy.

"No, I don't," Charlie said, and set a hand on her thigh. "Listen: Scott's my friend. I don't want him to feel shut out. He's in bad enough shape already. He knows something's going on, he just has no idea what. Can't we at least discuss it with everyone?"

"All right."

"He could help you with your research, even. He's a smart guy when he's not distracted."

"I said we could talk about it." Mary Beth lay back across Charlie's stomach.

"Your hair is wet," Charlie said.

"Do you want me to move?"

"No." He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, and Mary Beth shut her eyes.

"Poor Jack," Charlie said.

"How is he?" Mary Beth asked.

"I think he's in shock, still. He expected it, but it was too hard for him to think about his dad really being gone, so he never considered what it might be like."

"How could he know what it would be like?"

"I'm just saying this is tough for him," Charlie said. "Which I guess is obvious."

Mary Beth couldn't think of anything to say, so she kept silent. One of the nice things about being with Charlie was that he wouldn't misinterpret her silences.

"Speaking of the research," she said a while later, "I found something interesting."

"Tell me."

"I'm not sure it's anything. But over the last six years or so there have been a few reports of a flying man in the Milwaukee area. Just one-paragraph pieces in the local dailies, so not very much to go on. Except that a couple of the supposed witnesses said that he looked really old, so I started thinking about someone older who might have moved to the area recently, someone who might have a military record."

"Why military?"

"Because when I imagine the government finding us, that's what I worry about, that they'd turn us over to the military."

"Oh." He squeezed her shoulder. "I guess that makes sense."

"Anyway, I started looking through the
Stars
and Stripes
archives, and I found a mention of Allied superheroes during World War II. They treated it like a joke, but then I looked through other papers around that time, and they were mentioned in a couple of interviews with returning soldiers. Saying stuff about how the 'Yankee Doodle Dandies' were a big help."

'"Yankee Doodle Dandies'?"

"Well, we didn't pick our name, remember?"

"So you think this was real?"

"I don't know. Right now I'm trying to track down World War II vets in the Milwaukee area, see if I can figure out who our flying man is."

"Maybe Caroline will have someone to fly with."

"Yeah." Mary Beth rolled to look up at Charlie. "Do you think—is she upset about us? I mean, I know you guys . . ."

"She's not upset," Charlie said. "She seems a little relieved, actually. Now that I'm no longer on the market, she doesn't have to work so hard to fight my irresistible attractiveness."

"God," Mary Beth said. "You really are full of yourself."

"You think so?"

Mary Beth sat up and leaned down to kiss Charlie. "You're hopeless."

He folded his lips into hers, and she put her hands on the back of his head. The towel slid away from her breasts. He took the invitation and kissed her chin, her neck, and worked his way down.

"Charlie," she said, "do you ever think about her?"

"Who—Caroline? Why are you asking me that now?"

"Because now is when I always think you might be thinking about her."

"I'm not," he said.

"You can tell me if you are."

"I'm not."

"The thing is, you know what I'm thinking. You know that sometimes, just for a second, I think about other guys."

"I didn't know that," Charlie said.

"You didn't?" Mary Beth tugged the towel upward. "What do you mean? You know everything I'm thinking."

"Not everything," Charlie said. "That would take a lot of time and would be kind of rude. I pick up on a lot of surface things, and sometimes something deeper. But when we're doing this, I don't get a lot, except for what feels good and what doesn't. It's like a feedback loop. I feel what you feel. It's weird. I wish you could feel it."

"So you're not thinking about Caroline."

"It's not that I never think about her. I'm not a saint. But while we're having sex I think about you. I don't even
have
to think. I can feel you everywhere."

"Promise?"

"I promise," Charlie said. "So who have you been thinking about?"

"Oh, no," Mary Beth said. "We're not going there."

"Brad Pitt? Josh Hartnett? Charlton Heston?"

"Shut up," Mary Beth said.

"Make me."

She kissed him hard, and put one hand under his shirt, running it over his stomach, tickling his ribs, squeezing his nipples.

"Ow," he said.

"Sorry." She lifted his shirt off and kissed the bruised nipple. She unzipped his pants and flung away the towel that had fallen down around her waist. She pulled off his pants and boxers together and threw them into the corner. There was the awkward moment while she dug a condom from under the mattress and tore the wrapper, but when she put it on him he closed his eyes and groaned.

She lowered herself onto him, and he sat up, holding her as she slowly moved up and down. He gasped with her, and she tried to catch her breath. Her hair was in her eyes, in her mouth, in his mouth. She was going to need another shower.

The feeling was rising, the tease of ecstasy just out of reach. She moved faster, holding on to his shoulders, hearing him talking, not hearing what he was saying. When the orgasm came she threw her arms around him and squeezed.

When she let go of him he fell back, panting, groaning. His hands went to his chest, but he seemed afraid to touch it.

"Oh, god, Charlie, what happened?" She started to touch him, but hugged herself instead. He was still inside her, and selfishly she didn't want to move, didn't want to end the feeling yet.

"I think you broke my ribs," he whispered.

SUNDAY

This is 555-3558. Leave a message, please.

Beeeeeep.

"Mom? This is Caroline, are you there?

"I guess not. I'm not sure this is the right number. I tried that cell phone number you gave me, but it was out of service. Mary Beth took down this number when you called last month, but the pen broke while she was writing it down, and she wasn't sure she got it right. I don't recognize the voice on the machine. Is he your new boyfriend? If so, hello, I'm Jenna Bloom's daughter, Caroline. If not, I apologize for taking up all the space on your answering machine.

"Mom, I wish you were there. I really wanted to talk to you. I don't... I don't mean that as me criticizing you. I know you think I do that a lot. I don't mean to be a bitch.

"I'm having a really weird summer, Mom. I can't really get into it on an answering machine. The tape's probably going to run out on me here. I just wanted to tell you, I know I get mad at you a lot. I mean, you
are
sort of. . . you forget things sometimes, and sometimes you don't really think things through, it seems like. But I don't hate you or anything, if that's what you think. I just sometimes feel like all these people around me have parents who are close, who help them out. And we've always been different like that, I know. You taught me to take care of myself, and I'm glad you did. I'm sorry. I think I'm not making very much sense. I just miss you. I wish you weren't so far away.

"Oh, god, I'm sorry. I'm crying. I think I'm just tired. Look, I hope you get this message, and if you do, I'll be home pretty much all night tonight and all day tomorrow, so please give me a call. I—I love you, Mom."

Click.