The Golden Thread (16 page)

She said, “You get him.”

Lennie said, “Val tried. She went to Boston. You have to help.”

“Don't tell me what to do!” she yelled.

I yelled back, “Well, quit throwing tantrums like a little kid who has to
be
told what to do, then!”

She actually bared her teeth at us. “You are so stubborn against me! Like enemies.”

“Jeez,” I said, stomping around in a little circle of fury in front of the band-shell stage, “anybody would be against you, the way you behave! This is a free country, you know what that means? We don't do royalty here, okay? Whatever you were at home, around here you're just a scruffy tenth grader, like the rest of us! You have to bend a little bit, Bosanka, or you aren't going to get anywhere!”

“Oh,” she burst out in this kind of cold passion, “takes so long, everything here! Everything stands against me! Everything says ‘won't,' ‘won't,' ‘won't,' in not my language! No one is by me to speak my heart's language, saying yes!”

She sat there glaring at us with tears tracking down her cheeks. I was shocked speechless. Bosanka, crying?

Lennie said, “Hey, look, Bosanka—”

“Not my name!” She banged her fist on the edge of the stage. “My people don't know this stupid name, Bosanka!”

Lennie rubbed his forehead as if massaging the thoughts in there, an habitual gesture with him that made people think he was struggling to keep up. Sometimes it disarmed them. I'd never seen him use it deliberately before.

He said, “Seven is the magic number, right? On New Year's, the committee was seven, counting Joel. So even if Peter and Mimi are okay and, um, available, what can we do without Joel or Barb? We'd still only be five. We need more time to arrange things so we can all be there. Tomorrow is too soon.”

She pointed at him. “You don't worry, hear? You think I leave to you, I trust to
you
? You leave to
me
. When I need you, I get you. Where I need you, there you go, and what has to do, you will do it for me. Tomorrow, in the night when your moon goes high, you find my people!” She threw back her lank blond hair with a sharp, dismissive gesture. “Go away,” she said. “I don't like your foolish faces, your eyes shining false.”

“Fine,” I said. “We're going.” And we did, without another word.

Outside the park, I stopped at a phone booth and tried to call Barb at home. No answer. I was relieved. I would have to do some fast and furious talking if I did contact her in time, and I wasn't sure I was up to that right now.

When my change came jingling down the return slot, Lennie borrowed some and made a call of his own. I walked around, swinging my bookbag, watching my breath frost in the air and picturing what the world would look like under the rule of Bosanka and her “people.”

Like a foggy forest full of leaf-takers who had once been people, maybe? And trees that screamed when you hit them if you happened to be in a bad temper that day?

Lennie came and put his hands on my shoulders. He looked mournfully into my face.

“Brace yourself,” he said. “Tamsin's gone, too. She took the train to Connecticut to stay with an old friend of my father's so she can attend a dance recital there tomorrow evening. She's not due back until Sunday morning.”

“Oh, no,” I said hollowly. “That does it, doesn't it? No committee.”

“I'll phone up there tonight and try to get her to come back,” he said, but without real hope. “Hey, I'm sorry. She's always been—you know—she goes her own way, that's how she is.”

“I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry I couldn't hold things together better,” I said. Team captain, yeah.

“
We
couldn't,” Lennie said. “I told you, you're not hanging out there alone on this—not that the company you're in has done you much good so far.”

We sort of leaned our foreheads together and looked down at the space between our feet. I felt so tired, as if Lennie had to hold me up or I'd just drop.

“Listen,” he said huskily, “I'm going to take off now—I want to go swim at the Y. Swim and think. Are you okay going home on your own, Val?”

“Fine,” I said. “Call me later, will you?”

He brushed my cheek with his mouth, and we ended up kind of wrapped around each other. We had been through the wringer together with more to come, so I guess it's not surprising.

The surprising part was the kiss. It was a real kiss, with us jammed together from our noses to our knees. When we unjammed, Lennie gave me this wild look and said something I don't remember (his voice cracked in the middle of it, I remember that) and then he turned and loped away.

I stood there saying, “Oh boy, oh boy, what was
that
?”

It was not going to the movies and half kissing, half fighting to keep a boy off your entire body. In my limited experience dating always seemed to end up as a wrestling match with a person I didn't know if I even liked, let alone wanted to let anywhere near my physical self.

This was different. This was the kind of kiss you think about when you think about kissing—about how it should be. With somebody who matters to you. It left me feeling dazed but enlightened: so that's why people did it!

What a thing to find out the day before doomsday.

 

13
The Patchwork Fiddle

 

 

M
OM WAS SETTING OUT ASHTRAYS
in the living room, which meant she expected Manley the Author. She only put out ashtrays for Manley. Everybody else had to stick their ashes in their pockets if they insisted on smoking in our place.

I leaned in the doorway and watched her. She looked nervous and happy but tired, and all of a sudden I saw that she wasn't young any more. It was a shock to realize this. I guess I had just gone on seeing her as I remembered her from earlier, not noticing the changes. I noticed now and I felt a pang of regret, or something. At least, though, I had managed to keep her safely out of my problem with Bosanka. So far, anyway.

She saw me watching her, smiled, and said hesitantly, “Darling, are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” I said. “Any calls for me, Mom?”

“There was a message on the machine,” she said, bustling out to the hall closet to make sure we had a big hanger in there for Manley's heavy coat. “I wrote it down someplace. Tomorrow's Saturday; how about coming with me to Banana Republic? There's a shirt in the window that looks nice, for either of us.”

I said, “I'm busy tomorrow.”

She headed for the kitchen. “We're out of cheese again. Think you could pick up a wedge of Jarlsberg somewhere in the middle of being busy?”

It was creepy. Did the smell of danger leak right through my silver wish? She was trying to divert me from my course of doom without even realizing why.

What kind of mom did Bosanka have? Now there was a truly weird thought. I quickly shook it out of my mind.

“What about my message?” I said.

“Oh, is it important?” Mom said absently, looking over the bottles on the wine shelf.

“For Pete's sake,” I yelled, “of course it's important! Isn't it important when somebody calls and leaves a message for you?”

“That depends,” she said in the sarcastic tone that meant she was getting ticked off, “on whether the phone is free for a call of mine to get through in the first place. What are you so uptight about? What happened to TGIF?”

“Mom,” I said. “My message. What was it?”

She gazed at the ceiling. “Abraham Wechsler called from Boston. He wants you to call him back if you've seen Joel today.”

“Seen Joel?” My mouth dropped open. “Seen him where? Joel's stuck in a nuthouse up there!”

Mom checked the ice-cube trays in the freezer compartment. “Mmmm, I had a call from Joel's mother about that this morning. You didn't tell me that the boy had committed himself! Apparently now he's changed his mind. According to his uncle's phone message, Joel has eloped.”

“He's
what
?” I screeched.

My God. Not that frizzy-haired girl who'd been sitting on the floor in the TV room! And us with Bosanka and her “people” on our hands! Was Joel really crazy after all?

“It's just a term, Valli,” Mom said, standing back for a critical look at the glasses she'd set out on the counter. “It doesn't mean he's run off to get married, just that he's flown the coop. He escaped from the Minuteman Center and they don't know where he is. Now how about a bite to eat, like two civilized people?”

We had sandwiches while Mom talked about Manley and his Book and his Career and what a talented, wonderful Writer he was. I suppose I answered. What I was really doing was listening for the phone and willing it to ring.

Lennie probably hadn't even tried reaching Tamsin yet. I pictured him churning through the Y pool, his one continuous eyebrow flexed with concentration. The waiting was hard—my waiting, Mom's waiting. Her mooning about Manley didn't help.

Manley was a published author. I was just me, and now the stories I had lovingly crafted or sketched out or made notes for would never get into print, except maybe posthumously.

Maybe none of them were any good, anyway. What with the PSATs and finals and so on, I hadn't touched any of that stuff in months, except for the loony-bin story, and we know where that ended up when I reread it after visiting Joel in Boston. Maybe I was going to have my mortal coil shuffled off for me without leaving anything worthwhile behind me, anything my mom could point to afterward and say, “Val did that.”

The more Mom extolled the virtues of old Manley, the more my gloom deepened. At one point I believe I said that I thought Manley was about as suited to writing fiction as any ordinary baboon would be if you gave him a word processor to play with. At any rate, Mom was clearly not a bit sad when I chose to absent myself from the scene rather than sit there slowly going crazy.

How in the world was I going to stand a whole day of this tomorrow, until the moon went “high” enough for Bosanka?

I went out and walked through the cold night air to Central Park, crossed the bridle path, and trudged up the hill to Castle Lake. There was the Delacorte Theater, there was the little castle on top of its modest cliff. On the big field north of the lake a monster and my friend Paavo the wizard had died locked in mortal combat, one night last spring. How could the place look so innocent and peaceful now?

My senses felt as if they'd been cranked up high. I heard every whisper of branches and smelled every smell and saw bright, hard edges around everything.

The rush of traffic sounded far away. On my right the lake mirrored the dull glow of the overcast night sky. On my left the meadow stretched wide and empty. Pale cement pathways wound away into the dark among the isolated lampposts. Except for the glow of the widely spaced lamps, it was pretty dark.

It's nighttime and I shouldn't be out here, I thought, but I am and I don't care. This place is magic and it's
mine
, I thought. Damn it, I earned it, and I'm going to enjoy it while I can!

A pinpoint of fire flared and disappeared again immediately, at the east end of the lake under the statue of King Jagiello. Someone was over there smoking a cigarette.

My body went all watery-weak and my feet felt rooted.

Paavo Latvela had smoked—a bad habit he kept, he'd said, to remind himself what it was like to have one. And because he liked it. My heart swelled up with longing. Suppose that was Paavo, come back from death to help me?

Oh, if only!

The longing passed and I felt quiet and sad. Whoever was having a smoke in the dark down by the statue, it wouldn't be Paavo. But who else was fearless and foolhardy enough to hang out here at night, besides me?

I walked softly, on the grass, down toward that end of the lake to have a peek. The smoker cocked his head to blow smoke at the sky, and lamplight fell on his thin face.

Shock jolted me. I marched up to him. “Joel!” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Smoking.” He took another puff.

I noticed the way he held the cigarette, tucked well down between his fingers the way Paavo used to hold his—but I didn't think it would be tactful to say anything. I felt a sudden ache for Joel. He had loved Paavo too.

“Are they after you?” I said. “Are you hiding out here from the Minuteman Center people?”

He shook his head. “Turns out that if you just take off on your own, that's it. Their position is that they did their best to protect you by not agreeing to let you out. If you're crazy enough to refuse their protection by actually leaving the premises against their best efforts, legally they're off the hook and good riddance, as far as they're concerned.”

“Terrific,” I said. “So how did you get down here from Boston so fast?”

“My aunt called her lawyer, after she found me raiding her refrigerator, and he told her all of the above. Since I was home free anyway, she lent me the fare to fly down.”

Joel had a thin dark coat on over his sweatshirt and jeans. Didn't he ever feel the cold, for Pete's sake? He did look very tired, though.

“I'm glad to see you,” I said, and I meant it, though I wasn't sure whether the Comet Committee's chances were better now or not. With Tamsin in Connecticut and Barb too insulted to join us (and who could blame her?), we would still be only five out of seven.

“You're glad?” he said with a nervous laugh. “Don't be too sure.”

“What does that mean?” I sat down on the low stone wall that frames Jagiello's terrace.

Joel was quiet. Then he said, “Remember the day you and I heard Paavo playing music here on this terrace? He drew us like a pied piper.”

“Sure I remember,” I said. “I think about him a lot.” Lately, anyway.