The View from Mount Joy (6 page)

“They’re in every teacher’s desk,” she said, putting the remaining passes in her shoulder bag. She fluffed her hair with her hands. “How do I look?”

“How do you
look
?” I reached for her, wanting to answer her with a kiss, but she sidestepped me and opened the door.

“Hey, Joe—can you help me move a dresser tomorrow? Blake was going to help me, but he’s got to go straight to work after hockey practice.”

Although I’d preferred her to ask me to pledge my undying love (which I would have), I said sure. After what she’d done for me, I’d have moved a dresser, a refrigerator, and a sectional couch, all in one trip.

“Great! I’ll pick you up at seven, then.” She poked her head out and looked down the hallway.

“Coast is clear,” she said, and although she didn’t wink, her smile made it seem as if she had. “See you later, Joe.”

“Innt ma Krissi the preesing eur seen?”

I shrugged helplessly.

“Innt ma Krissi the pressing eur seen?”

“Thank you, Grandma,” said Kristi to the old woman whose bed we stood around. To me she said, “She’s asking you if you don’t think I’m the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen.”

I gave a big, enthusiastic Boy Scout nod. “I do, Mrs. Swenson. I sure do.”

Kristi laughed.

“Way to force a compliment out of him, Grandma.” She went to the dresser I had helped her move, and rummaged through the top drawer.

“I’m going to brush your hair, Grandma,” she said, finding a brush. “It looks kind of wild.”

“Ese ays zas a ashon.”

“She says that’s the fashion these days.” Kristi laughed again, a laugh I hadn’t heard from her before, sweet and light.

Very gently, she swabbed the woman’s thin white hair with the brush she found in the drawer. “I can come right after school tomorrow, so I’ll wash it for you then.”

A semblance of a smile lifted one side of the twisted grimace that was Mrs. Swenson’s mouth.

“Ill eu iv e a ehicur too?”

“A pedicure, a manicure, anything you want, Grandma.”

The old woman looked at me, her blue eyes full of the life the rest of her body seemed to have given up on.

I smiled at her, and instead of smiling back, she winked.

Kristi pretended to swat her with the brush.

“Stop flirting, Grandma. Joe’s too young for you.”

“I ike eh yeh.”

“Well, he’s
too
young. You’d be corrupting a minor.”

The old woman’s laugh was more a cackle, and drool spilled out of the side of her mouth that couldn’t move.

“But I’ll turn eighteen in February,” I said, because even though the drool was a little gross, I liked hearing that laughter.

“E sti ey art,” said Mrs. Swenson, her good hand patting the left side of her chest.

Kristi didn’t have to translate that for me.

“Yes, be still,” I said, pretending to calm my own rapid heartbeat by patting my chest and a moment later, a nurse’s aide came into the room, asking what all the merriment was about.

“She’s only sixty-nine,” said Kristi as we stood in a jerky elevator that smelled like one of those casseroles—maybe tuna noodle—that stinks a little like vomit. “I know she seems a lot older, but that’s because of the stroke.” The elevator groaned as if the cables were overstretched. “You should have seen what she was like before it.”

“When…when did it happen?” I said, almost unsure of how to talk to Kristi when she was so un-Kristi-like.

“Last year. She was having coffee at the bakery when her friend said all of a sudden—bang!—‘the donut flies out of her hand and she drops to the floor.’” She pressed her frosted lips together and shook her head. “I used to spend nearly every weekend with her when I was little. She was so much fun—we’d make popcorn balls and watch Lawrence Welk together. I know that doesn’t sound like much fun, but it was.”

The elevator bounced to a stop and the doors opened with a quiet groan.

“What about your grandpa?” I asked as we stepped into the over-heated lobby, which smelled even more strongly of that casserole with questionable ingredients.

“Oh, he died when I was seven. And I never even knew my dad’s parents. Grandma Dorothy’s all I’ve got left.”

Her voice was so sad, so lonely, that I had to put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder for a moment, and even though I might have looked like a concerned and caring guy, the only thought jumping around like a monkey in my head was:
Did I earn another blow job? Huh? Huh? Did I? Did I?

Five

From the
Ole Bulletin,
December
1971:

Christmas vacation, and the livin’ is easy. Our Roving Reporter merrily roamed the halls, asking a handful of Bulls how they planned to spend two sweet weeks of wintry freedom.

Leonard Doerr, senior:
“Well, the German club is having their big
Weinachten
party—I’m making apple strudel for it!—and then there’s our big church concerts (come on down, everyone—I’m in the handbell choir) and of course I’ll be writing a lot of my college applications. I’ve got my fingers crossed for Northwestern, but I wouldn’t say no to Oberlin, either!”

Heywood Jablome, senior:
“I’ll probably spend the holidays with my parole officer.”

Babs Johnson, junior:
“I’m going skiing with my family in Colorado.”

Janet Vromann, junior:
“I’m going skiing with Babs’ family in Colorado, ’cause my parents don’t ski. My dad said he tried it once, but he couldn’t stop and he ran into his instructor. Fortunately he was only going down the bunny hill, so he wasn’t going all that fast. Still, fast enough to break his wrist. And fast enough to break the instructor’s tailbone. I hope I don’t break anything of mine or the Johnsons’.”

Mr. Frank Lutz,
Ole Bull
advisor:
“I’m going get my fireplace going and sit in my favorite chair and read until I’m cross-eyed.”

Laurie Stein, junior:
“I’m collecting toys for kids who might not get anything for Christmas. It’s kind of funny, ’cause I’m Jewish and we don’t celebrate Christmas, but this is more about Santa Claus than Jesus—no offense to anyone. What I mean is, I do a lot of volunteer work and this is one of the annual projects, and I think it’s neat when a kid who’s not expecting anything under her Christmas tree—if she even
has
a Christmas tree—finds a doll or a sled or something. It’s just kind of a neat thing.”

Despite the fact that I’d be spending time with my own grandmother, whose company didn’t thrill me the way Mrs. Swenson’s company thrilled Kristi, it was a big relief to go back to Granite Creek for Christmas. I didn’t care that the skies held a big surprise clearance sale, dumping its overstock of snow on us for the entire ride and throwing in a bonus of winds that rendered visibility to about two inches; didn’t care that a four-hour drive took us seven; didn’t care that tow trucks and highway patrol cars trolled the highway like vultures, ready to feast upon another inevitable spin-out.

“I think I aged ten years,” said my mother when we finally pulled into my grandma’s driveway.

“Well, then I aged twenty,” said my aunt Beth, who had shared driving duties with me. “And she’ll add on another five.” She nodded toward the front door, which Grandma had opened and now stood in front of, arms crossed.

My mother fixed her lipstick in the visor mirror. “We’re all going to get along this Christmas, remember, Beth?”

My aunt sighed. “Sure, Carole. Whatever you say. Santy Claus is going to come and the turkey won’t be tough and we’ll all get along.”

It didn’t take long to see that the magic of Christmas wasn’t about to cast its spell on this house. We had barely sat down in the small living room with our coffee and cookies before Grandma started complaining.

“My goodness, you said you’d be here by four—I’ve been worried sick about you. Would it have been so hard to call?”

“Mom, we only stopped once, at the Dutch Girl in Alexandria, but the line to the phone was too long and we figured we’d lose even more time if we waited.”

“Big café like the Dutch Girl is bound to have more than one phone,” she said with a sniff. “And I was going to have a nice warm dinner waiting for you.”

“Mom, I told you not to have dinner ready, that we were going to stop at the Dutch Girl.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that I didn’t, because it would have been ruined.”

“At least we get to enjoy these delicious cookies and coffee together,” said Aunt Beth, and if sarcasm was venom, hers would be lethal.

“You expect me to brew a pot at ten o’clock in the evening?” said Grandma, not about to apologize for serving instant. “Just like you expected me to slave the day away making homemade cookies?”

“Mama, we didn’t expect anything,” said my mom, putting her arm around the thin ridge of Grandma’s shoulders. “We’re just glad to be here.”

“Some people have a funny way of showing it,” said Grandma, looking at my aunt as if she had tracked something in on her carpet, even though it was a house rule you had to take your shoes off the second you stepped inside.

We all tried, but the small talk was just that: small. And I was glad when my mom yawned and said we were pretty tired from the long drive and it was time to hit the hay.

“Well, I washed both the kitchen
and
the bathroom floors this morning,” said Grandma, as if we weren’t the only ones who had a reason to be tired. “And don’t forget
I’ve
got to get up early to put the turkey in.”

“I’ll help you.” Aunt Beth’s offer came just a beat before mine and my mother’s, but Grandma wasn’t interested in any of them.

“At five
A.M
.?” Her snort substituted for a laugh. “I get you up at five
A.M
. and the one thing I can count on is a bunch of crabapples for Christmas dinner.
No thanks.
” She stood up then, pulling her sweater around her, as if the wind had just blown in, and told everybody good night. Both my mother and aunt stood, and maybe it was because I didn’t like the way she acted—as if her cheek barely had room for their kisses—that made me envelop my grandma in a bear hug and lift her off her bootie-slippered feet.

“Oh my!” she said in a strangled voice, as if I’d punched her instead of hugged her, but I held on, held on until I felt a twinge of pressure that let me know she was hugging me back.

I was assigned, as usual, my uncle Roger’s twin bed, with its bedposts carved up with initials and spotted and scarred in the places where his chewing gum had been pried off. The last time I had seen him was a couple of months after my dad’s funeral, watching him pack his duffel back on the very same bed.

“You come and spend the summer with me, mate,” he said, rolling his underwear into little cylinders. “I’ll be in either Tahiti or Bora Bora, and what they say about Polynesian women is true.”

“What do they say about Polynesian woman?” I asked.

Roger looked at me. It’s not often a person has eyes the colors of gem-stones, but his were a true turquoise, a color so pretty and jewel-like, you could imagine another kind of man getting in trouble for them, getting beat up for them. But anyone picking a fight with Roger over his eye color or anything else was going to pick a fight they were bound to lose; my uncle was wiry but strong, his arms banded tight with muscles made from crewing on boats that sailed the seven seas and scything through jungle forests and hoisting hundred-pound sacks of grain on his shoulder to be delivered to tribal chieftans. My uncle had been one of the first to sign up for the Peace Corps, and after his stint in Ethiopia, he’d decided adventure’s call was louder than the peeps coming from Granite Creek and had been traveling the world ever since. As a kid, I thought he was Jack London, Long John Silver, and John Glenn rolled into one, far and away the most romantic figure of my boyhood.

It didn’t matter to my grandmother that he loved his life, only that he wasn’t spending it near her, just as she didn’t mourn my grandfather so much as resent him for leaving her. Those were some of the conclusions my mom and Beth had come up with in their many discussions of our family. Another one was that they never wanted to wind up like Grandma. In fact, the Christmas before last, they both counseled me to “always keep an open heart.”

“An open heart meaning…?”

“Meaning be glad for someone else’s happiness,” Aunt Beth had said.

That Christmas Eve, Grandma had handed Beth her present and before she could even open it, Grandma had said, “Now, I know it’s nothing special for someone who’s got a big-shot job down in Minneapolis, but I thought it was cute.” The gift was a straw purse with a little wooden apple for its knob, and even I could tell that Grandma’s idea of cute was not in step with her daughter’s, yet Beth’s thanks were profuse and genuine-sounding.

“Also meaning letting someone love what he or she wants to love,” continued my aunt. “Even though it would be easier for you if they loved something else.”

It was a tradition to read Roger’s Christmas letter—this one had been postmarked from the Galapagos Islands—after we opened presents, and it had also become a tradition for Grandma to say something like “You’d think he could manage a visit home once in a while, all the world traveling he does” or “Seems he likes to spend the holidays with those natives more than his own family.”

“Above all,” said my mom, wrapping up the tutorial in what constituted an open heart, “don’t let what happens in your life make you bitter. No matter
what
happens.”

I thought that was pretty brave advice coming from a woman who had been widowed at age thirty-eight; pretty brave advice from both daughters of a woman who was pickled in a brine of hurt and bitterness.

Lying back in Roger’s old bed, I stared at the ceiling, upon which he had painted the solar system (earning another Boy Scouts badge), thinking of the promises and advice I had been given in this room. I didn’t know about the promises, but I sure could have used the advice, although considering the topic on which I needed counsel, I wasn’t about to solicit any from my aunt, let alone my mom.

But what
was
a guy supposed to do when the finest girl in school was using him as her own personal sex toy and in particular, what was a guy supposed to do when he was more than happy to be that sex toy?

“Are we going steady?” I’d asked Kristi after the second blow job, this one given in her car parked in a secluded spot by Minnehaha Falls.

She was putting on lip gloss and didn’t look away from the rearview mirror, but nodded slightly to let me know she appreciated that I’d made a joke, only she didn’t find it very funny.

“Joe,” she said after she’d blotted her lips, “if you think I’m gonna drop Blake for you, think again.”

“So,” I said, making my voice sound high and wounded, “this is just about the sex?”

Raising one eyebrow, Kristi looked at me, then turned the ignition key. “You want the facts, Joe?”

I let my voice stay high. “Yes, please.”

She slid the lever of the heater and a blast of warm arm huffed out of the vents.

“Joe, I don’t mean to brag, but I’m Kristi Casey, okay?”

I nodded; this much I understood.

“And my boyfriend’s Blake Erlandsson, and come on, wouldn’t you say we’re
the
couple at Ole Bull?”

My head continued its steady bob.

“And I’m never gonna jeopardize that, okay?”

“So why,” I said, truly trying to understand, “are you giving me blow jobs?”

“For the practice.”

“You can’t get enough practice with Blake?” I had to laugh. “Seriously, I think he’d be happy to practice as much as you’d like.”

Kristi tossed her head and looked at me for a long moment, as if trying to figure out how much she could tell me.

“I’d never think to give Blake a blow job,” she said. “All it would take is for him to tell one person—he’s so tight with Olsen, and you know what a big mouth Olsen has—and then I’ve got some slutty reputation like Sharon Winters, and what do I need that for?”

I shook my head, not quite believing what I’d just heard.

“What makes you think I might not tell anyone?”

The usual calm, cool look of superiority disappeared from her face.

“’Cause I trust you,” she said, a little wheedling note of panic in her voice. “’Cause I think this is a…a mutually beneficial situation, wouldn’t you say? And why would you want to endanger a mutually beneficial situation?”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t. But I know what I’m getting out of it. What are you?”

“Like I said, Joe, practice. I…I want to know how to do things, to be good at things.”

“Like sex,” I said, more as a statement than a question.

“Exactly. And not that I’m just thinking about my reputation—I mean, God, how outdated is that? Then again, the reality is, if you’re a girl, it
does
matter. And Blake…well, Blake’s not exactly the horniest guy I’ve ever met.”

“He’s not?” I had never gotten this good a scoop as the Roving Reporter.

Kristi shook her head and turned the radio on low. Creedence Clearwater was singing “Bad Moon Rising,” and we listened to it for a while.

“I mean, you can’t have everything—and come on, Blake’s got just
about
everything. Captain of the hockey team
and
the baseball team. Two Division One scholarship offers. Homecoming king—although we know the whole thing was rigged. And I don’t think anyone would think he’s
not
the cutest guy in the whole school.”

I shrugged; on this subject I really didn’t have an opinion.

“Plus he’s smart and I couldn’t ask for a sweeter guy; God, the presents he gives me! So it’s not like I’m complaining…. It’s just that, well, I guess I have a more developed sex drive than he does. And whether we wind up together for good or not, when I go away to college I plan to do my share of sexual experimentation—I mean, that’s what college is for, isn’t it?”