The View from Mount Joy (10 page)

“Shit.” She looked at us and giggled. “I mean, shoot.”

“Mom, why’d you let Heinz out without his leash?” said Kirk. “You know he’s too little to be outside without his leash—and it’s pouring outside, did you know that?”

“From the looks of you, I can make that deduction,” she said, saying each word with a strained precision. “You should get out of those wet clothes, Kirk, and you”—she waved her hand at me, and the smoke from her cigarette zigzagged—“whoever you are, should get out of those wet clothes too.”

“That’s Joe, Mom. And Joe, that’s my mom.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Casey?”

The woman’s face brightened, and the smile she offered was a worn-down, blurry version of Kristi’s.

“Well, I do very well, young man.” She held up her glass in a salute. “Thank you so much for asking.”

She sat down at the uncleared kitchen table, ashing her cigarette in a saucer.

“And for your information, I did not let little Heinzy out—your father did.
After
he crapped on the rug.” She smiled again, pointing her cigarette at Kirk. “The dog, that is, not your father.”

“Come on, Joe,” said Kirk, bundling the puppy under his arm, “let’s go to my room.”

“Nice to have met you,” I said.

Nodding, her eyes half-closed, Mrs. Casey inhaled her cigarette. “I mean it, Kirk—give him some dry clothes and put his in the dryer.” She exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I will not have this polite young man catch his death in my house.”

On the television, Mary Tyler Moore was yukking it up with Mr. Grant, but there was no one in the living room appreciating whatever joke had just been told, at least no one conscious.

“And that’s my dad,” said Kirk, pushing aside a metal walker as we passed a man sprawled out on the couch, snoring. One arm hung limply, its hand open, as if reaching for the empty glass that lay on its side on the carpet.

As a paperboy in junior high, I always liked collection days, standing inside entryways, waiting for the man or woman of the house to find their wallet or coin purse to pay me. I always liked the surprise glimpses inside households: the paintings and sculptures of nudes filling the school librarian’s parlor, the Edith Piaf records that were always blasting in the motorcycle mechanic’s little rambler, the smells of chocolate chip cookies or baking bread that filled the house of Mrs. Tompkins, a crabby lady who never tipped me once. There were two parish houses on my route and both of them smelled like medicine, the Lutheran one like Pepto-Bismol and the Catholic one like cough syrup; if I thought about it, Pastor Johnson always did look like he had a stomachache and Father Frank was always hacking away, the phlegm gurgling in his throat like rainwater through a gutter.

The Casey house smelled of cigarettes and liquor and the kind of couches you see for sale at the Goodwill. It was not what I expected from the house Kristi Casey burst out of into the world every morning.

I felt kind of stupid, but less stupid than cold, so I changed into a bathrobe that Kirk gave me. His bedroom was in the basement, right next to the laundry room, and I could hear my tennis shoes banging around in the dryer with the rest of our clothes.

Kirk put a couple of 45s on an old record player. His room was much more organized than the rest of the house: his
Mad
magazines and
Archie
comic books and issues of
Amazing Stories
in neat piles on a shelf, his bed made, the linoleum-tiled floor relatively free of clothes. We sat around on two taped-up beanbag chairs, throwing the dog a rolled-up pair of socks Kirk got out of his dresser.

“Sorry about my parents. They’re not always like that.”

I shrugged, and while I tried to think of something not completely lame to say, Kirk added, “Usually they’re a lot worse.”

I laughed, and then, thinking maybe he wasn’t joking, I stopped. That made Kirk laugh—the kid was nothing if not astute—and then I had to laugh a little more and we settled back, tossing Heinz his sock ball while we listened to 45s.

After a while the puppy lost interest in the socks and settled into Kirk’s lap, and I thumbed through the little boxes with handles the records were stored in.

“Man, you’ve got a lot of these.”

“I collect them. I’ve got everyone from Anka to Zimmerman.”

“Zimmerman?”

“Bob Dylan. I wanted to impress you with the breadth of my collection—you know, A to Z—but I couldn’t think of any
Z
’s except Dylan’s real name.”

“But Anka?” I asked the kid who had been playing air guitar to Jethro Tull. “You listen to Paul Anka?”

“A collector doesn’t have to listen to everything he collects.”

“Hey,” I said, pulling out a record in a paper sleeve. “‘Red Rubber Ball.’ The summer I was going into ninth grade this song was playing on the radio all the time. I used have a little transistor that hung from the bars of my banana bike—I’d have to change the batteries about every other day ’cause I played it so much.

“And look at this—‘Cherish’! That song reminds me of my friend Steve’s older sister, Dee Ann Alquist. She ratted her hair about this high”—I held my hand a half foot above my head—“and she had a little heart necklace that would disappear deep in the vee of her V-neck sweaters.”

“‘Deep in the vee of her V-neck sweaters,’” said Kirk. “You said that the way the people of Metropolis say, ‘It’s Superman.’”

“And look at this one,” I said, pulling another record in a paper sleeve out of the box. “‘Michelle.’ There was a girl named Michelle in my sixth-grade class and I’d—”

“Joe, please,” said Kirk, and the puppy opened an eye to look at his master and then closed it again. “Give me a break. If you’ve got a story for each of my records, we’ll be here all night.”

“Sorry,” I said, rifling through the box but silencing my commentary.

I don’t know how many 45s we listened to, but when the record player clicked off after playing the Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn,” I realized I didn’t hear the dryer anymore.

“I better get my clothes,” I said.

After I changed in the tiny mildewy-smelling closet that was the basement bathroom, Kirk met me at the stairs.

“Hey, are those Kristi’s drums?” I asked, seeing a drum set on the other side of the furnace.

“Well, they’re officially mine. I got them the Christmas I turned eight, but they’re the ones Kristi learned on.”

“She’s a great drummer.”

“I will give her that,” said Kirk, nodding. “It’s kind of an idiot-savant thing, I think. She grabbed the sticks out of my hands one day, sat down, and started playing like Keith Moon.”

The puppy, sleeping in Kirk’s arms, stretched out a paw. “Come on, I’ll walk you out. Just in case my parents wake up and think you’re a burglar or something.”

His mom had joined his dad in the living room, echoing his snore with one of her own. She was half sitting, half lying on an easy chair; he was in the same position on the couch, his hand still reaching for that spilled drink.

As we walked softly past them, Kirk shrugged, a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture, before pulling the afghan up over his mother’s shoulder.

“Thanks again for the ride,” he said, opening the front door for me.

“Anytime. Thanks for the laundry service. And for playing all those records. I don’t know when I last heard ‘Monster Mash.’”

“A true classic.”

As I closed the front door behind me, a car door slammed and suddenly, as I was walking down the walkway, Kristi was running up it.

“Joe?” she said, surprise stretching her voice thin. “What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Kristi,” I said, breathing in the fresh, rain-washed night.

She stood inches away from me, looking at me with, I don’t know, sort of a panic in her eyes.

“Were you out with Blake?” I asked conversationally.

“Joe, I asked you a question:
What are you doing here
?”

“I gave Kirk a ride home from work,” I said, nodding toward the house. “Then Heinz was loose and I helped—”

“You were inside?” she asked, her voice matching the look in her eyes.

“Yeah, Kirk played me a bunch of his records and—”

“That asshole,” she said, marching past me.

“Hey, he’s a nice kid.”

She whirled around.

“Listen, Joe, not everyone’s family sits around the piano singing show tunes.”

“Kristi, I don’t know what you’re—”

“All I can say is, if you open your big mouth about anything you saw in there, well…well, then I’ll tell everyone about your aunt being a dyke.”

Staring at me for a split second, she wore the same look of cold triumph I’d seen on her face in Miss Rudd’s classroom.

She had raced up the cement stairs and into the house before I even had time to formulate a simple
What’s that supposed to mean?

I stood there like an idiot, staring at the door and trying to figure out what and who had just gone inside it.

Eight

My mom and aunt were in the kitchen, playing Scrabble. As usual, the coffeepot was on—they knocked back caffeine any time of the day or night, with no visible side effects that I could see—and while my mom studied her tiles, my aunt dug at something in a cake pan.

“Hey, Joe,” said Beth as I shut the back door. “Sit down and have a brownie with us.”

“Maybe you’d better not,” said my mother. “We’ve got lousy dental insurance.”

Beth laughed and set down the spatula. “It’s the first time we ever made these. They’ve got caramel in them, and the caramel sort of hardened.”

“Eighteen,” said my mom, laying down the word
retire.
“Not much for a triple word score.”

She wrote down her score and reached over to touch my arm. “How was work?”

I shrugged, watching as my aunt laid chunks of the excavated brownie on a napkin and pushed it toward me.

“No thanks,” I said, holding up my hand.

My aunt looked at me, and I could see in her face that she saw something in my own.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Joe,” said my mother, “you didn’t do anything to Beth’s car, did you?”

I almost laughed; would that things were as simple as putting a dent in my aunt’s Mustang!

“Do you like women?” I asked, knocking over decorum and censorship at the same time.

I watched the color fade from Beth’s face as I heard my mother ask, “What did you just say?”

Feeling reckless and angry and tired, I turned to her and said, “I asked Aunt Beth if she likes women. I want to know if she’s a homo.”

My mother’s eyebrows and jaw dropped, and then she began to recite my name, a timeworn signal that I was in deep trouble.

“Joseph Rolf Andreson—”

“It’s okay, Carole,” said my aunt, offering up the kind of smile the clowns in those velvet paintings wore. She looked into her coffee cup for a long moment before meeting my eyes.

“Well, since you asked, Joe,” she began, “yes, I do like women. So I guess that makes me homosexual—although we prefer to use the word
lesbian.
”

She couldn’t even muster up a sad clown smile now, and I wondered if the lump in my throat was going to dissolve or if I was going to be asphyxiated right there at the kitchen table. I thought of our request nights, how her living room would turn into a little piano bar, with me playing songs she and my mother asked for. Just the other night, my aunt had stood behind me, her hand on my shoulder, singing “Let It Be.” My mother’s and aunt’s musical tastes hadn’t ossified in their youth; they both loved the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, especially their ballads, and a request night inevitably included “Lady Jane,” “Norwegian Wood,” “Angie,” or “Hey Jude.” I thought of the presents Beth liked to surprise me with: the book
—Cat’s Cradle, The Moviegoer, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test—
she’d wrap in gold paper and leave on the dining room table; the sports coat from Dayton’s she’d draped over the hallway chair, the note pinned to the plastic garment bag reading,
You’ll look sharp in this!
(and she was right, I did); the imported wafer cookies from Germany she kept buying because I liked them so much.

She was funny and kind and had welcomed us in with open arms, but as I met her stare, sharp little pieces of disgust and betrayal pierced the lining of my stomach and worked their way up to my throat as I realized I hardly knew her.

“Joe!” said my mom as I jumped out of my chair and raced across the kitchen.

“Joe!” she called again as I ran up the stairs two at a time and I heard her call my name a third time as I slammed the door to my bedroom.

Two weeks after my dad’s funeral, my uncle Roger took me camping at Lake Superior. Our little fire, a ragged triangle of red and orange, was the only color in the dark nightscape, and I remember the unease I felt that I couldn’t tell where the black lake left off and the black sky began. I was cold, but I didn’t know that I was shivering until my uncle put his arm around me.

“It’s okay to cry, you know,” he said.

“Why do you say that?” I snapped, angry that he was giving me permission to do something I was desperate to do and just as desperate not to do.

“Because I’m concerned about you.”

“Did my mom tell you to say that?” I said, leaning forward to poke at the fire with a stick, but my intent was to shrug off his arm. “Because really, she’s crying enough for the both of us.”

“She’s sad.”

“Well,
duh.
” The fire snapped, and I was surprised at the thought that jumped into my head:
I hate you as much as that fire is hot.

“Would you rather she didn’t cry?”

I prodded the fire with my stick.

“I just don’t like to see her so sad,” I said finally.

“She’d be just as sad if she didn’t cry. But she knows it hurts even more.”

“What does?” I said, jabbing at a chunk of red-hot wood until it spit back sparks.

“Not crying. Crying’s turning a valve, Joe. Turning a valve to release the pressure.”

“In that case, my mom should call in a plumber, ’cause she doesn’t know how to turn it off.”

He didn’t say anything, and I crouched there, my chin resting on my knees, attacking the fire with my stick and feeling a lot younger than fourteen.

After a while my uncle said, “Well, I for one could go for a s’more,” and for a few minutes I did nothing but concentrate on toasting my speared marshmallows to a perfect golden brown, but the bottom marshmallow caught fire, and even though I tried to blow the flame out, it burned black, and I remembered all the campfires I’d sat around with my dad, all the marshmallows he’d purposely stuck right in the fire to be charred black
—Don’t ask me why, but it seems the more burnt the outside, the better it is on the inside—
and at first I thought I could swallow that gasp, that great big mournful hiccup, but as the rest of the marshmallows caught fire I dropped the stick and cradled my head in my arms.

And man, did I cry. My uncle made his s’more sandwich, and it was only when he was done eating it that he brushed the graham cracker crumbs off his jeans and moved close to me.

I stayed in that little nest his arms made, stayed with my face against his chest and cried, my loneliness and grief as big and black as the lake and the night sky around me.

Hey, Joe, the creek’s frozen. Get your skates and we’ll go shoot a few pucks.

Hey, Joe, come with me to Grudem’s and help me pick out a birthday present for your mom.

Hey, Joe, come sit and look at the stars with me.

Hey, Joe, didn’t I tell you to rake up those leaves?

I’m not telling you again, Joe—get to bed now!

How many invitations both bad and good had my dad extended to me, how many questions had he asked me, how many orders had he given? I sat there, my thoughts turning into a math class, trying to remember everything he’d said, trying to count the sentences, the words. Trying to count the times we’d played catch, the number of episodes of
The Dean Martin Show
and
Bonanza
and
I Dream of Jeannie
we’d watched together, the canoe trips we’d taken, how many of his “famous Hawaiian” hamburgers (a simple recipe—a hamburger topped with onions and pineapple) he’d grilled in the summer, how many times after I’d cried out as a little kid in the middle of the night, he’d stumbled into my bedroom with a squirt gun to shoot the boogey man who hid under my bed. How many, how many, how many?

“I’m scared I’m going crazy,” I said, trying to catch my ragged breath. I explained to my uncle how I tried to count things I’d never be able to count. “Like how many times he said my name. How could I ever count that—and why would I want to?”

“You’re just trying to find a way to hold on,” said my uncle.

“I don’t know how long I can hold on.”

“I’ll help you. And your mom’ll help you.”

Nodding, I wiped my nose with my palm and moved away from him, not so much because I wanted to but because I felt like I should. I was fourteen, after all, not four.

“If counting things helps you,” said my uncle, spearing a couple of marshmallows on a stick, “keep counting.” He handed me the stick. “But if you’re counting just to keep from crying, hell, I’d try crying.”

I did, and it did. Help, that is. I started crying myself to sleep, and even though it drained me, it didn’t drain me
and
make me nervous, the way the counting had. I didn’t become a big crybaby like poor Laird Pitoski, who sealed his fate as
the
kid to pick on when, in the third grade, he sat sprinkling his desk with tears because he spelled the word
write
wrong. It wasn’t in my nature to cry in public like that, but in the privacy of my bedroom—man, I could let loose.

That night, in my room at my aunt’s house, it didn’t take long at all before I had to turn over the soggy bog my pillow had become. I hated the picture I had in my head of Beth’s face when I asked her if she liked women. I hated making her feel bad—but why hadn’t she and my mom told me her big secret? It’s not like I had anything against queers—I just never suspected my own aunt was one. Why had Kristi known, and why would she tell me the way she had?

In school, I didn’t go out of my way to run into Kristi and she didn’t go out of hers to run into me. I knew the golden age of blow jobs was over, but I was glad, not wanting to sully myself with a mean, snaky girl like Kristi. Ha! The truth was, as much as I mourned the loss of those blow jobs, I missed Kristi. Yeah, she could be mean and snaky, sure, but being with her was like sledding down an icy hill on a thin piece of cardboard—fast and dangerous and wildly
fun.

Once I saw her studying in the library, and until I drew the flint-eyed attention of the librarian, I hid behind the stacks for a while watching her.

One of Kristi’s hands was splayed through her streaky blond hair, the other tapping a pencil on the table in one of her elaborate rhythm schemes. Surrounded by books, her face was scrunched up in concentration, and it gave me a little thrill to see that she was struggling.

I’d see her waltzing through the hallways, the queen on a walking tour, greeting the serfs with a halfhearted wave, a little smile. And I couldn’t
not
see her at pep rallies, punching her pom-poms in the air in an attempt to force the student body to believe that the upcoming golf tournament or track meet was just as exciting as a football game.

But while it was easy to avoid someone in the halls of a big school, I did not have the same success in my aunt’s house.

“What do you think you are, a burglar?”

“Oh, hi!” I said, startled. I had been so absorbed in closing the door as quietly as possible, in tiptoeing across the floor, that I hadn’t seen my mother on the chair by the fireplace. “Well…see ya!”

“Don’t even think about leaving this room until I’m done talking to you.” My mother’s voice was quiet, but in the way Marlon Brando’s voice as Don Corleone was quiet. “Now sit.”

I sat.

“Have you apologized to your aunt yet?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her.”

“I’m not surprised, the way you’ve been sneaking in and out of the house.”

“Mam, I—”

“Well, you’ll have a chance to apologize tonight. Now go and change into some nice clothes—Beth’ll meet us at the concert.”

“What concert?”

“
My
concert,” said my mother, and her smile had the bite of a raw onion. “Remember? I’m a music teacher? At a junior high school? And tonight’s our big spring concert. Now hurry up—go get dressed!”

It didn’t matter what I screamed at myself:
Tell her no, man! What are you, a mama’s boy? Don’t be such a pussy!
Ultimately I knew that in the annals of what my mother considered important, her spring concert
and
an attempt at conciliation with my aunt were important. And despite any evidence to the contrary, I did not like disappointing my mother.

Spring had sprung and the world was giddy with it. Tulips splashed color all over the neighborhood, and the tight shiny buds dotting the branches had burst open into leaves. The air was sweet with the cologne of lilacs and crab apple blossoms.

After we got out of the car in front of the school, my mom jumped over a muddy part of the boulevard she just as easily could have walked around and then tagged me, shouting, “You’re it!” and I chased her into school, both of us laughing like dorks.

In the auditorium, behind the curtain, I helped her arrange with more precision the chairs the janitors had placed onstage, and the giddiness factor rose as the junior high kids rushed in, grabbing at the music stands their instrument cases bumped into, shouting at one another and at my mom.

“Hey, Mrs. A., do you have an extra reed?”

“Hey, Mrs. A., I can’t find my
Love Story
music!”

“Hey, Mrs. A., you look nice!”

She did too—all flush-faced and excited, unable
not
to smile, borrowing a reed from one clarinetist to give to another, finding the missing sheet music, thanking her complimenter, a pimply trumpeter.