I became aware that Leigh was looking at me very closely, and I wondered how much of what I had been thinking showed on my face.
“Did you take Mr LeBay’s address?” she said.
“No.” I thought for a moment, and then remembered the funeral, which now seemed impossibly far back in time. “But I imagine the Libertyville American Legion Post has it. They buried LeBay and contacted the brother. Why?”
Leigh only shook her head and went to the window, where she stood looking out into the blinding day. Shank of the year, I thought randomly.
She turned back to me, and I was struck by her beauty again, calm and undemanding except for those high, arrogant cheekbones—the sort of cheekbones you might expect to see on a lady probably carrying a knife in her belt.
“You said you’d show me something,” she said. “What was it?”
I nodded. There was no way to stop now. The chain reaction had started. There was no way to shut it down.
“Go upstairs,” I said, “My room’s the second door on the left. Look in the third drawer of my dresser. You’ll have to dig under some of my undies, but they won’t bite.”
She smiled—only a little, but even a little was an improvement”. “And what am I going to find? A Baggie of dope?”
“I gave that up last year,” I said, smiling back. “’Ludes this year. I finance my habit selling heroin down at the junior high.”
“What is it? Really?”
“Arnie’s autograph,” I said, “immortalized on plaster.”
“His autograph?”
I nodded. “In duplicate.”
She found them, and five minutes later we were on the couch again, looking at the two squares of plaster cast. They sat side by side on the glass-topped coffee table, slightly ragged on the sides, a little the worse for wear. Other names danced off into limbo on one of them. I had saved the casts, had even directed the nurse on where to cut them, Later I bad cut out the two squares, one from the right leg, one from the left.
We looked at them silently: on the right; on the left.
Leigh looked at me, questioning and puzzled. “Those are pieces of your—”
“My casts, yeah.”
“Is it… a joke, or something?”
“No joke. I watched him sign both of them.” Now that it was out, there was a queer kind of loosening, or relief. It was good to be able to share this. It had been on my mind for a long time, itching and digging away.
“But they don’t look anything alike.”
“You’re telling me,” I said. “But Arnie isn’t much like he used to be either. And it all goes back to that goddam car.” I poked savagely at the square of plaster on the left. “That isn’t his signature. I’ve known Arnie almost all my life. I’ve seen his homework papers, I’ve seen him send away for things, I’ve watched him endorse his paycheques, and that is not his signature. The one on the left, yes. This one, no. You want to do something for me tomorrow, Leigh?”
“What?”
I told her. She nodded slowly. “For us.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll do it for us. Because we have to do something, don’t we?”
“Yes,” I said. “I guess so. You mind a personal question?” She shook her head, her remarkable blue eyes never leaving mine.”
“How have you been sleeping lately?”
“Not so well,” she said. “Bad dreams. How about you?”
“No. Not so good.
And then, because I couldn’t help myself anymore, I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her. There was a momentary hesitation, and I thought she was going to draw away… then her chin came up and she kissed me back, firmly and fully. Maybe it was sort of lucky at that, me being mostly immobilized.
When the kiss was over she looked into my eyes, questioning.
“Against the dreams,” I said, thinking it would come out stupid and phony-smooth, the way it looks on paper, but instead it sounded shaky and almost painfully honest.
“Against the dreams,” she repeated gravely, as if it were a talisman, and this time she inclined her head towards me and we kissed again with those two ragged squares of plaster staring up at us like blind white eyes with Arnie’s name written across them. We kissed for the simply animal comfort that comes with animal contact—sure, that, and something more, starting to be something more—and then we held each other without talking, and I don’t think we were kidding ourselves about what was happening—at least not entirely. It was comfort, but it was also good old sex—full, ripe, and randy with teenage hormones. And maybe it had a chance to be something fuller and kinder than just sex.
But there was something else in those kisses—I knew it, she knew it, and probably you do too. That other thing was a shameful sort of betrayal. I could feel eighteen years of memories cry out—the ant farms, the chess games, the movies, the things he had taught me, the times I had kept him from getting killed. Except maybe in the end, I hadn’t. Maybe I had seen the last of him—and a poor, rag-tag end at that—on Thanksgiving night, when he brought me the turkey sandwiches and beer.
I don’t think it occurred to either of us until then that we had done nothing unforgivable to Arnie—nothing that might anger Christine.
But now, of course, we had.
44
DETECTIVE WORK
Well, when the pipeline gets broken
And I’m lost on the river-bridge,
I’m all cracked up on the highway
And in the water’s edge,
Medics come down the Thruway,
Ready to sew me up with the thread,
And if I fall down dyin
Y’know she’s bound to put a blanket on my bed.
What happened in the next three weeks or so was that Leigh and I played detective, and we fell in love.
She went down to the Municipal Offices the next day and paid fifty cents to have two papers xeroxed—those papers got to Harrisburg, but Harrisburg sends a copy back to the town.
This time my family was home when Leigh arrived. Ellie peeked in on us whenever she got the chance. She was fascinated by Leigh. and I was quietly amused when, about a week into the new year, she started wearing her hair tied back as Leigh did. I was tempted to get on her case about it… and withstood the temptation. Maybe I was growing up a little bit (but not enough to keep from sneaking one of her Yodels when I saw one hidden behind the Tupperware bowls of leftovers in the refrigerator).
Except for Ellie’s occasional peeks, we had the living room mostly to ourselves that next afternoon, the 27th of December, after the social amenities had been observed. I introduced Leigh to my mother and father, my mom served coffee, and we talked. Elaine talked the most—chattering about her school and asking Leigh all sorts of questions about ours. At first I was annoyed, and then I was grateful. Both my parents are the soul of middle-class politeness (if my mom was being led to the electric chair and bumped into the chaplain, she would excuse herself), and I felt pretty clearly that they liked Leigh, but it was also obvious—to me, at least—that they were puzzled and a little uncomfortable, wondering where Arnie fitted into all this.
Which was what Leigh and I were wondering ourselves, I guess. Finally they did what parents usually do when they’re puzzled in such situations—they dismissed it as kid business and went about their own business. Dad excused himself first, saying that his workshop in the basement was in its usual post-Christmas shambles and he ought to start doing something about it. Mom said she wanted to do some writing.
Ellie looked at me solemnly and said, “Dennis, did Jesus have a dog?”
I cracked up and so did Ellie, Leigh sat watching us laugh, smiling politely the way outsiders do when it’s a family joke.
“Split, Ellie,” I said.
“What’ll you do if I won’t?” she asked, but it was only routine brattiness; she was already getting up.
“Make you wash my underwear,” I said.