Triplines (9781936364107) (21 page)

Lenny also continues his casual but persistent interest in marijuana cultivation. This is the most compelling of his investigations, his self-education, because he has already
earned more money by helping Sal than he has in his entire young life. Without having any real concrete plans, he begins preparing the back yard for a possible crop, tilling the various plots near the foundation and in his mother's old garden. He fertilizes the soil to prepare for the sowing after the first frost.

He has no seeds yet, but reads in a new magazine called
High Times
about a store in New York that buys seeds in Canada for “ornamental purposes” and resells them in the city. He looks up the store, which is listed as a natural food grocery, and he plots a future trip into Manhattan.

It surprises him how easy all of this is—he only needs time and money and energy, all three of which he has in plenty, given that it's summer vacation and he has a wad of cash from Sal. He also spends more time reading novels at the air-conditioned library. He discovers the young adult science fiction section, and devours stories about spaceships, time travel and aliens, and is so moved by one time-travel novel in which the protagonist went to Ancient Egypt that he writes a letter to the author.

The librarian explains to him how to write authors in care of the publishers, and he likes the idea of being able to contact anyone through the mail. He writes Jimmy Carter, asking about space travel, and receives an embossed thank you card and a signed photo of the Carter family. He writes TV and movie stars, including Mark Hamill from
Star Wars
, the cast of
Eight is Enough
and
Three's Company
, and authors like Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. He even writes the cast of
Brady Bunch
, but the letters come back Return to Sender, because he didn't realize he was watching all the
shows in reruns.

The letters to celebrities and authors, many of whom either send back photos or short notes, make him feel connected to the world beyond his little neighborhood, and when he learns about a pen pal program run through the library, where he will be given an address of a student his age from somewhere in Asia, he signs up.

He's lonely, isolated, and spends most of his time by himself, but begins using reading and writing as a way to keep connected. He misses the time with Sal and on a couple of occasions goes looking for him at his house, but his sister says he's with his girlfriend.

Lenny wonders how he can get a girlfriend.

Ed calls home and speaks to their mother briefly, telling her how much he loves California. He weighs the notion of canceling his plans to go to SUNY Binghamton and reapplying to schools around Los Angeles, but because he's a New York resident Binghamton would be cheaper. He'll have to take a year off from school to establish California residency, which their mother doesn't want him to do. He speaks briefly to Lenny, telling him that he'd love it out there, since the weather is great and the beaches are the best he has ever seen.

This is the seed that plants itself in Lenny's mind, and California will be his destination years later, where he will live near the beach, and where he will find the memories of this time resurfacing during his fortieth year, and feel compelled to write this book.

One evening Lenny's mother comes home and tells him about police cars and fire engines converging a couple blocks away, near the library. The streets have been cordoned off because of a big accident. Lenny wants to go out and check, but she brought home dinner, McDonald's, and he's torn between eating his Big Mac and seeing the police action. In the end the French fries win out.

The next morning he walks over to the scene, to Nar-wood Avenue, but sees no evidence of the activity. He goes into the library and asks the librarian about the police cars here yesterday. She says, “It was a motorcycle accident. Some poor guy crashed his motorcycle into a car.”

The mention of a motorcycle makes him straighten up. He asks if she knows the name of the motorcyclist.

“No. I heard he wasn't wearing a helmet. I heard he died.”

“How would I find out who it was?”

“The local newspaper will have it in the next edition.”

“Can I find out sooner?”

“Why?”

“It might've been a friend of mine.”

The librarian pauses, and says, “I'm sorry. Yes, you can call the local police. But you can also call your friend's parents to check.”

Lenny walks the few blocks to Sal's house. As soon as he sees the flowers on the doorstep, he knows. He approaches the front door slowly, already dreading the news, and rings the bell. Sal's sister appears, and she has a blank, muted expression on her face. Lenny asks her if Sal is home.

She shakes her head. “He was killed yesterday.”

“Oh.”

“He crashed his motorcycle.”

“Oh.”

They stand there for a minute, and then she closes the door.

Lenny walks around the neighborhood slowly, not quite believing any of this, and finds himself heading to the swamp. A few kids he hasn't seen before play on the rope that extends over the creek, though none of them jump in. They swing over the water and back, and then stumble onto the bank. He watches them for a while, smiling when one of them accidentally falls into the water and leaps out, disgusted.

Lenny takes the convoluted paths to the grow site, where he finds the cut stalks depressing. A few leaves lie dried and withered in the scuffed dirt. The tripwires are still here, even though Sal had trampled them into the ground.

Then Lenny remembers the seeds in Sal's crawlspace. It won't take long for his parents to find those, and when that happens, they will be upset.

He hurries out of the woods and to Sal's house again. The crawlspace door is on the side of the house, accessible simply by cutting through their side yard, and is covered with thick bushes and a row of young saplings. When he sneaks along the side of the house, he stays well below the windows. He can hear a TV blaring from one of the rooms. The crawlspace door is locked, but Lenny still has the extra on his keychain.

He unlocks the door and climbs in. He notices immediately that Sal had already cleared out most of his drug-related materials, including the shelf of books and pamphlets. He
used to have a bong and a small box of rolling papers here, both of which are missing. Lenny smells air freshener—lavender—that mingles with the faint hints of pot. He crawls to the corner, where a large plastic storage bin sits among a few scattered mini-bike parts and a radio. When he pries open the top, he finds the jar of seeds—little brown pellets filled to the top with a few dried leaves and tiny stems mashed in. He doesn't see any other evidence of drugs, and suspects this had been part of Sal's new outlook.

He hears footsteps upstairs. He knows he can't be caught here, so he quickly carries out the heavy jar, relocking the door quietly. Sal's mother is directly upstairs, talking into a phone. Her voice sounds depleted and exhausted. Lenny waits until she drifts into a different part of the house and then he hurries out of the yard and down the street, cradling the jar in his arms.

He feels guilty for stealing something from a dead friend, but justifies it as keeping Sal's parents from discovering anything.

When he returns home he hurries downstairs and searches for a hiding place. There are no locks to the basement and he worries about his sister snooping again, so he decides the best thing to do is not to hide it. Marijuana seeds resemble some varieties of maple seeds, so he tapes on a label “maple seeds for replanting tree” and leaves this on his shelf.

But his next project is to build a safe.

Late that night he finds his mother at her home office, the desk lamp the only light on in the house, so the glow fills the hallway. She looks up, and asks why he's awake. He tells her he's having trouble sleeping, and she motions for him to
sit in the chair across from her. When he does, he mentions that the motorcycle accident had been with Sal.

“That older boy?” she asks, alarmed.

“He died.”

“Oh, no.” She closes her eyes for a moment. “His mother… I met her a few times. She must be… Oh, this is terrible.”

“It was a new motorcycle. He wanted that for a long time.”

“Are you okay? Are you sad?”

“I don't know. I guess not. I didn't see him that much anymore.”

“But still. He was your friend.”

They sit quietly. She asks if he's getting ready for school, which starts in a couple weeks.

“I guess so,” he says, then asks how he is supposed to do well.

She smiles. “Do everything your teacher tells you.”

“That's all?”

“Study very hard for all the tests.”

This isn't very satisfying advice, so he resolves to go to the library to learn more about how to do well in school.

“Do you miss your father?”

“No,” he replies, surprised by the question.

“Your father canceled our insurance without telling me. I found out by accident. We weren't covered with health insurance and car insurance for a few weeks. It was really bad of him.”

“Do you have insurance now?”

“We all do. Yes. It's not the canceling—there's no reason why he should pay my car insurance. It's not telling me
that's…. He can be so…” She stops herself. She takes a deep breath and asks if he wants something to eat or drink.

“No. I'll go back to bed.”

“Give me a kiss goodnight.”

He kisses her cheek and she touches his arm. “Are you sure you're okay? About Sal?”

“I think so.”

“I can't imagine what Sal's mother is going through. If there's a funeral service, do you want to go?”

He wonders if Tommy and Sal's other friends would be there. He replies, “No.”

“Okay. Go to bed.”

Lenny stays up late and watches a horror movie on cable TV, a creepy story about little creatures that come out only in the dark. By the time the movie is over, it's almost two in the morning, and he can't bring himself to turn off the lights. He studies the marijuana pamphlets, the jar of seeds in his line of vision, and he wonders about cultivating a small crop. He has no idea what he would do with the harvest, but he has all these seeds. It seems like a waste not to try them.

While leafing through a catalog that lists books about lockpicking and safecracking, he wonders if Sal would appreciate a book on lockpicking. Then he remembers that Sal is dead. Slowly it dawns on him that anyone, even he, can die randomly and suddenly. He has trouble grappling with the implications. He makes a mental note to look up more information about this at the library. It seems he can find all the answers there.

Lenny feels the full repercussions later, when he sees Sal's sister walking home one afternoon. She is always quiet, and whenever he sees her around the neighborhood she nods to him, but they never talk. One afternoon, just a week or so before the first day of school, Lenny wanders home from Radio Shack and sees Terry by herself, staring down at the sidewalk as she turns the corner. She's avoiding the cracks, Lenny can tell, from the way she steps awkwardly forward, almost jumping ahead.

He follows her, though he doesn't know why. She isn't heading back to her house, and Lenny is curious.

Compared to her late brother, Terry is short and muscular—she plays softball and volleyball—and doesn't look very much like Sal except for a longish face. She walks toward Robinhood's, a sporting goods store on Sunrise Highway, but doesn't enter. Instead, she stares through the display windows, her hands shoved into her pockets, her shoulders hunched.

She continues window shopping. Lenny thinks about Mira, and how she would feel if he died, and then knows how lonely he'd be if something happened to his sister.

Terry just stands there. She stares into the window for a long time, and then Lenny sees that she isn't focusing on anything in particular. Her gaze is unfocused and distant. He can't bear to watch her any longer. He slips away and returns home.

The countdown to the new school year preoccupies Lenny, and he draws big red x's on his calendar as the first day approaches. He knows he'll lose his free time, and steps up his martial arts training and library research, including learning more about marijuana cultivation. He also begins taking trips into Manhattan, finding the bookstores and newsstands that carry esoteric magazines. It's so easy to get into the city, the train heading directly into Penn Station, and then all he has to do is walk up the steps from the station and there are half a dozen magazine stores within a block.

Years later, when he will look back on this pivotal period in his life he sees that it helped define him: he became independent, and he discovered a sense of his self that could only emerge from solitude. His desire to become a writer wouldn't take hold for another few years, but the discipline required of that job had its origins during this time, when he understood that the key to finishing anything isn't the initial enthusiastic rush but the slow and steady daily effort.

He is also getting physically stronger and more flexible. By the end of the summer he can do full splits and graceful kicks over his head. He has no idea if his form is textbook, but he emulates with ease the kicks and hand strikes he sees on the kung-fu movies. Soon he'll buy a VCR after researching the differences between VHS and Betamax, and he will teach himself tae kwon do from instructional videos. That, and taking lessons from a local studio, will eventually get him good enough so that he'll join his college tae kwon do team, and he'll even perform on stage in Seoul.

But it starts with punching and kicking a tree in his back
yard and listening to kung-fu movies as he falls asleep.

One afternoon he wants to see the sunset from the bell tower. The ideal location would've been the train station, but he doesn't want to deal with the late afternoon commuters who crowd the platform during rush hour. So he jimmies the back door of the church and climbs up to the tower. He sits on the west-facing banister, and looks out over the neighborhood. From this vantage point he can see the library and Narwood Avenue, where Sal died. The sun is setting.