The Decoding of Lana Morris (18 page)

Whit listens, but in a slightly detached way, without questions, as if this is a parade of sad events that ought to be watched from a distance if it had to be watched at all. “Ahh,” he says when she is done. He falls quiet for a second or two. Then, “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry for everything.” He takes a deep breath, so deep it seems to swallow back sad thoughts.

“So how was your day?” she says.

He looks off for a moment. There are last long shafts of light that cut through the cracks in the side of the garage, and dust motes float in that yellow glow. And then he’s looking back at Lana.

“Honestly?” he says.

“Honestly.”

He keeps his eyes on hers. “My day was a piece of shit, just like almost all my days are, and the only thing that
kept me thinking anything close to hopeful was the thought of coming home to this house and seeing your face.”

This person standing in front of her, laying himself bare to her, is, Lana believes, the secret person who’s been locked inside the old Whit Winters, the secret person Lana saw that day in his room, wanting to get out. It is the secret person she is in love with.

Later, when Lana thinks back to it, she can’t really say for how long they had stood silently staring at each other in the last light of the day, and she can’t really say who kissed whom. It wasn’t one or the other, it was more a gravitational pull that moved them each equally toward the other, and then each was pulling the other close, and what started at the lips spread through their bodies, and when finally the kiss was over, Whit Winters looked gravely at her and said, “Well, that’s about as carnal as two people standing up with all their clothes on can be.”

Lana had been kissed before, but never by someone she liked. She wanted the light-headed happiness to go on and on, to keep feeling its exhilaration, but Whit glanced toward the house and sighed a slow sigh and, just like that, the real Whit slipped back inside his body. He gave the nape of her neck a soft, whispery kiss, and then he said, “Guess we’d better go back in.”

And they did. But when they left the garage and began crossing the lawn to the back porch, Lana glanced up toward the roof of the house and saw for a fleeting instant Veronica standing in the window staring down at them before the curtains pulled closed.

T
hat night, Lana can’t sleep.

Tilly can, of course, and does, the gentle singsong pattern of her snoring interrupted only when she repositions herself in her bed. But Lana is too agitated for sleep; the pleasure in recalling her moments that day with Whit is too keen to let go of. There are two kinds of pleasure for her in these recollections. When she thinks of Whit telling her of the hope it gives him to think of coming home and seeing her face, that’s one kind of pleasure, and when she thinks of her lips and body pressed hard against his, it’s another, and there’s a strange need within her to alternate from one to the other, because each makes the other more intense.

It’s too much finally, and she gets up and goes to the bathroom to take a shower, to wash away the confusion. She closes the bathroom door behind her without locking it, and only a minute or so after the water pipes shudder and the hot water begins to flow, she hears the door creak open.

“What are you doing?”

It’s Veronica, and Lana, standing behind the solid shower curtain, freezes.

The curtain slides back, and there stands Veronica, solid amid the cloudy vapors of the room. This time her voice is lower, colder, tighter. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

Lana has covered herself below the waist with one hand and above the waist with a crossed arm, and her speech is similarly defensive. “Taking a shower,” she says.

“You know the rules,” Veronica says. “No showers after ten.”

“I forgot that rule,” Lana says, which is the truth, not that it matters.

Before Veronica turns to leave, she gives Lana a long, icy stare. “You forgot that rule,” she says, “and some others besides.”

Finally Veronica breaks her gaze, and Lana glimpses what she’s wearing—a long white nightgown, almost totally sheer—and Lana realizes that what, just now, she couldn’t avoid seeing, Whit, too, could not avoid seeing. And why not? He is her husband.

Whit is Veronica’s husband.

Veronica is Whit’s wife.

An hour later, Lana has come to understand that, for keeping you from sleep, the only thing worse than romantic giddiness is gnawing guilt.

You forgot that rule and some others besides
.

Lana is sixteen.

Whit is thirty-one.

And married.

These are the hard facts, and at 3:35 a.m., wanting to escape them, Lana slips on the earphones of her iPod.

C
het begins that day’s podcast with what he calls the Mailbag Segment. “We get very few letters,” he says in his heavy, Chief Chetteroid voice, “but those we do get don’t say much.” Pause. “Okay, let’s reach into the ol’ canvas mailbag and see what bites us.”

There is the exaggerated rustling of paper.

“Dear Big Chief Chetteroid, you have sprinkled wisdom over the waters of the Two Rivers. Your people will sing your song before the fires of many winters. P.S. My suggestion for the Oddball Olympics is a naked-woman box-elder-bug-eating contest.”
A pause. “There it is, Chetteroids and Chetteristas, proof positive that the K-SOD listenership is AT LEAST TWO STANDARD DEVIATIONS FROM NORMAL.”

Again the rattle of paper, then:
“Dear Chet in your Chetness. Love your show, et cetera, et cetera, fabulously witty, et cetera, et cetera, but when I go to my rhyming dictionary software and punch in
Chetteroid,
nothing comes up but hemorrhoid.”

Long silence, then the sounds of paper being rumpled, followed by chewing sounds and finally a loud gulp. “Sometime Big Chief Chetteroid need eatum venomous
letter even though eatum venomous letter give Chief Chetteroid great gas.”

Lana, sitting up in bed in the predawn hours with the man she shouldn’t love sleeping one wall away with his wife, can manage a smile at Chief Chetteroid, but not a laugh.

Still, a smile is better than nothing.

After a long pause, Chet does a segment on the Oddball Olympics—he has in fact scheduled what he calls a tractor-styling event for that week, with “all interested members of the K-SOD Nation to congregate at nine a.m. Friday at the Highway 20 rest stop just east of town.”

Lana has seen this rest stop. It consists of a dirt turnout, a rickety picnic bench, and a single shade tree.

“Bleachers will be provided, as well as an official Oddball guide to this Oddball event. All Sodbusters invited, as well as their second, third, and fourth cousins.”

A short silence, then the sudden sound of a loud buzzer, and Chet says, “Hell’s bells. It’s the formidable Miz Buzzbottom telling us it’s time for a … 
CHANGE O’ TOPICS
. There goes Buzzbottom now waddling up to the Change-o-Topic Spin-o-Meter. She grunts, she spins, she hopes no one wins! Round and round it goes and where it stops … well, actually we do know. It … stops … on … 
Conversations with the Long-leggedy Neighbor Girl
. Good luck, I say, because today, in just such a conversation, the Long-leggedy Neighbor Girl said to the Chetness, ‘Did you know that spinach is nothing more than a potherb of the goosefoot family?’ and the Chetness said, ‘No, I did not know this fact if it is one, but I am not surprised,’ and the Long-leggedy Neighbor Girl, WHO IS NOT A SEQUENTIAL THINKER, said,
‘What one wish would you make if one and only one wish was granted you?’ ”

Pause. “A good question, one I’d suggest that every Hemorrhoid and Hemorrista ask her- or himself. It is not easy and can in fact be borderline paralyzing. Because for the one wish you do make, there will be dozens, hundreds, gazillions you don’t.”

There’s a long stretch of dead space, then Chet begins to talk about his mother taking him to the wishing well at Pioneer Park and telling him that William the Wish Reader lived at the bottom of the well, just waiting for wishes to read and make come true, so Chet would write his wish down and fold the paper tight and drop it in, and his mother did, too—all of which is interesting to Lana because Chet hardly ever mentions his mother. All Lana knows is that she ran off.

“Horse,” Chet says, breaking one of his characteristic silences. “That’s what I wrote down every time, except maybe once or twice I might’ve put
pony
.” Pause. “That wish is still technically outstanding, by the way. I’m still listening for that friendly nicker at the kitchen window.”

Pause. “After talking to the Neighbor Girl today, I took a little field trip down to Pioneer Park to take a firsthand look at the wishing well, and let me tell you, Sodbusters, it wasn’t pretty. The bucket’s gone, the crank handle’s gone, and the well … well, the well is filled with Dorito bags. I mean, WHAT IS IT WITH THESE DORITO EATERS?”

Another pause. “I found a
custodial engineer
. Borrowed a rake. I’m going to clean that wishing well out, clean up William the Wish Reader’s personal habitat. It takes a little while, raking those Dorito bags up the side of a wishing well, and the custodial engineer watches the
whole time. ‘Whew!’ I say when I’m done. ‘That’s a job.’ The custodial engineer nods but doesn’t speak. ‘How do you do it?’ I say, and he says, ‘I just throw a match down there and burn it all.’ I say, ‘I guess that would be easier.’ And you know what he says? He says, ‘Yes, it would.’ ” Pause. “I’m telling you, ’Roids and ’Ristas, that custodial engineer down at Pioneer Park is a dry one.”

Pause. “Okay, let’s stay focused. You have one wish. I will pass on the advice of my mother. ‘Don’t wish for a thing,’ she would say. ‘Wish for a condition.’ She gave good health, happiness, and being less stupid as examples.” Pause. “I myself went with a one-word wish this afternoon, two consonants, two vowels, starting with the twelfth letter of the alphabet. Wrote it down, dropped it in, and can only hope that our flame-throwing custodial engineer hasn’t turned William the Wish Reader into Crispy Bill.”

A few minutes later, Chet signs off—“This is kay-ess-oh-dee. Keep those cards and letters coming. And please don’t call again”—followed by his signature theme song.

Lana sets her earphones on the bedside table and walks down the hall to the window that gives onto Chet’s house. It’s dark out still, but Lana hears three different roosters beginning their crowing. Across the yard, Chet’s room is dark, but a downstairs light is on and the figure of Chet’s father moves from counter to counter in the kitchen, Chet’s father, who works in a machine shop in the next town and who Lana’s hardly ever seen because he leaves for work so early and comes home so late.

Lana starts counting letters on her fingers and when she gets to twelve, she’s on
l
. Four letters, two vowels, beginning with
l
.
L-o-v-e
, she thinks. It had to be love Chet
was wishing for. A little sappy for his Chetness, frankly, but she can’t help but smile. He’s been turned to mush by some girl. She wonders who, but she doesn’t wonder long. She yawns. It’s almost dawn, and her thoughts are finally willing to release her body to sleep.

A
bouncing ball and giddy shouts.

Lana’s eyes blink open. It’s hot in the bedroom, her skin is glazed with sweat, and Tilly’s Cinderella clock says 10:13. Lana bolts up and goes to the window. Down below, on the uneven concrete in front of the garage, Whit is playing basketball with all the Snicks, passing the ball, dribbling the ball, making them all laugh.

Lana washes her face, dresses, hurries down. Sticky plates and used forks are all over the table, the waffle iron is out, and cracked eggshells sit openmouthed on the counter.

Lana’s annoyed, thinking what she’s going to say when she gets outside, but once she gets to the back door, she stops. Carlito and Tilly and Alfred all shout for the ball, and Whit, like some close cousin of Spider-Man, snatches the careening ball and passes it to one or the other of the Snicks, who shoots or passes and then grins with pleasure. Whit keeps up a streetwise patter and it occurs to Lana that Whit talks to the Snicks like they’re not handicapped and he acts like they’re not handicapped, and suddenly they don’t seem so handicapped.
Maybe only men can do it
, she thinks.
Women feel too much pity
.

Whit seems different, too. It’s the Inside Whit released for a few minutes, out in the dappled sunshine of a cracked basketball court, set free from his own life. As she watches, he lobs the ball to Carlito, who heaves the ball toward the backboard. It tips the front of the hoop, bounces off the backboard, and, to everyone’s surprise, drops down through the net.

“Bandito scores!” Whit yells. “Bandito scores, and the Maniacs take the lead!”

Among the Snicks, there are whoops, grins, and bobbing heads. Tilly yells, “Ban-dito, he’s our man!”

When Lana walks out and catches Whit’s eye, he sets the ball down and tells his team to take five. He walks over smiling. He looks almost as happy as he did after their long, stand-up, close-hold kiss. “Well,” he says, “if it isn’t sleeping beauty.”

“Couldn’t sleep last night,” she says. “And then finally I guess I did. Who made breakfast?”

“Yours truly. Banana waffles.” He’s still smiling. He’s like an overflowing vessel of happiness.

“What about your housepainting?”

“Got the crew going by phone.”

Lana glances at the Snicks. “And your team seems to be winning.”

Whit goes into coach mode. “This is no ordinary team,” he says. “What they lack in skill, they make up for in heart.”

Lana is quiet. It seems like the perfect way to say something she’s known but hasn’t found the words to say.

“How come you couldn’t sleep?” he says.

“Just thinking. I couldn’t stop thinking.”

“About what?”

About you and me and you and Veronica,
she thinks. “I don’t know. Everything, I guess.”

He leans slightly closer. He’s been sweating, but she likes his smell. He says, “Well, I spent a little time thinking about a particular kiss that I believe you also had a part in.”