Time Passes
After that, it’s funny, but we started getting along better. Like clearing a field of rocks before you start to plant. The difference in the car, the easing in his silhouette, these remained. They were present the next morning, when I came downstairs—later than usual—and found Joshua and Beau Ray making a mess of the kitchen and calling it breakfast.
Joshua had brewed some tar-strong coffee I had to water down to swallow. He’d put Beau Ray in charge of making toast, and it was clear that Joshua didn’t know about Beau Ray’s fascination with the toaster. By the time I set foot in the kitchen, Beau Ray had toasted up more than half a loaf of Sunbeam. I said that would probably do, what with Momma not home yet from Judge Weintraub’s.
Later, after I’d dressed for work, I found them in Beau Ray’s room. Joshua was sitting on my brother’s bed—which was made, actually made—looking at a family photo album from when we Pinecob Gitlins were all under the same roof.
Joshua looked up when I came in. He had this huge grin on his face. “Leanne, I swear to God, you are physical proof of the beneficial aspects of aging,” he said.
He held out the album, pointing at one snapshot in particular. There I was, in our backyard, body like a sausage, no curves at all until you got to the top of my head and started down again. I was eleven. The picture snapped Beau Ray and Max—both fifteen—and me and Sandy, all in the backyard at the end of a water-balloon fight that Sandy and I looked to have borne the brunt of.
“Sandy looks pretty much the same now,” Joshua said. “But you—it’s like I can hardly see your face in this girl. Look at you, eyeing Max. You guys have known each other a long time.”
I nodded quickly and turned to Beau Ray, who was digging for something in the back of his closet.
“Beau Ray,” I said. “I’ve got to get ready for work. Have you taken your medicine?”
“He did. I saw him,” Joshua said. “I asked him to show me these. I hope that’s okay.”
I looked back at Joshua right as Beau Ray emerged with a laugh and an armful of old high-school yearbooks.
“That’s fine,” I told Joshua, then said that I’d see them after work.
Momma had asked me to start getting a list together for Beau Ray’s birthday party at the end of July. Of course, there was Susan and the kids and Tommy. And Sandy. And Beau Ray’s friends from physical therapy. And Max and the guys.
I wanted to give my brother Tommy the most notice, since sometimes he took construction jobs down at the very bottom of the Shenandoah Valley and would likely need a little more advance word to get off work. But everyone was keen to celebrate Beau Ray’s thirtieth birthday.
We had talked to a number of doctors after Beau Ray’s accident. The first of them believed that my brother wouldn’t make it through the night. And of course, he did. The second one said he’d probably not walk or speak again. The third one said that he’d most likely die from a seizure before he was thirty. And not only had that not happened, but the incidents of bad seizures had lessened in the passing years. We weren’t in the clear by a long shot, but Beau Ray’s thirtieth still seemed cause for celebration.
I paged Tommy during my lunch break and a few minutes later, he called me back.
“Anything wrong?” he asked.
I said no.
“You knock over any apple carts lately?” He laughed.
If I’d been closest to Vince, I’d surely been farthest from Tommy, both in age and disposition. “I was calling to remind you that Beau Ray’s birthday party is coming up.”
“Oh, yeah,” Tommy said.
“He’s going to be thirty,” I said. “Momma wanted to make sure it got on your calendar. Where are you?”
“I’m working a job out by Blacksburg,” he said.
“That Virginia?”
“Well, duh, Leanne. Look at a map.” That’s the exact sort of comment that kept me far off from Tommy. “I’ll try to make it, but I can’t promise I’ll be able to get the time off. Summer’s the busy season,” he said.
“I know Beau Ray’d love to see you,” I told him.
“Well, sure,” Tommy said. “I said I’d try to make it.”
But to Tommy, it seemed like every season or month or week was too busy. Susan, of course, would come, with her kids. And Joshua would be there. The party would go on with or without Tommy, just like every other day did.
That night, Joshua asked if I might help him run lines for Musket Fire. I read the part of Elizabeth, who was the minister’s daughter—the shrew character, if you were going to compare Musket Fire to The Taming of the Shrew, like the California crowd always did. I tried to make her sound passionate and conflicted but not at all lusty. But Joshua couldn’t concentrate. He kept correcting his words and revising his accent, and finally gave up and threw the script down.
“You weren’t in any of Beau Ray’s yearbooks,” he said.
I nodded. That was on account of our age and grade differences.
“So can I see yours?” he asked me. I wanted to know why. “To get a better sense of you back then. You know, life history stuff.”
“Why?” I asked him again.
“Because I want to,” Joshua said.
I cut my eyes at him, like Momma did so often, trying to gauge whether it was truth.
“Plus it’s good acting practice. I’ve got to keep myself working. You heard me—I sucked when we ran lines just now.”
I didn’t think he’d sucked, but he had sounded a little more stilted than I’d expected.
“How is looking through my yearbooks practice?” I asked him.
“Show me and I’ll tell you.”
So I relented and he followed me upstairs. We sat on Vince’s bed and I opened up my senior-year annual.
“Choose someone,” Joshua said.
I asked who.
“Just anyone. Someone you knew.”
There were only seventy people in my graduating class, so I knew everyone, but Joshua sounded exasperated when I pointed this out. He poked a finger at a picture of a boy named Fletcher McCobb.
“Him,” he said. “Tell me about him.”
I stared into Fletcher McCobb’s smile. I wondered where he was right then.
“Fletcher had an older brother who went out with Susan a few times,” I started to say.
“Tell me about Fletcher. Not his brother.”
I started again. I told him that the McCobbs had moved to Pinecob when I was in sixth grade, and that Fletcher had had a black eye on his first day of school. I told him how the McCobbs had more money than most families in town, and that Fletcher was always sporting one bruise or another. Even when I was little, I knew that his family was the sort that got shushed over.
I told Joshua how Fletcher used to wear a denim shirt with patches made to look like red handkerchief fabric, and how in high school he’d had a motorcycle and had once dropped it on the asphalt just outside the Wilsons’ service station. I told him how Fletcher had joined the army straight out of high school, even though everyone figured he could have made more money working for his father. But Paulie had once done some work on the McCobb’s house, painting or some such, and I remembered him saying that Fletcher had been smart to enlist.
“Is that enough? How would that even help?” I asked.
“It does,” Joshua said, and he got serious. He started saying how every person has a particular way about them and that his job—being an actor—meant trying to recreate real people or make up new ones, and how it’s the particular details that jar a character loose from a script, making them into something that feels like life itself. Joshua told me how listening to stories about a perfect stranger, someone like Fletcher McCobb even, helped him remember all the different ways people grew up, so many-sided it could take your breath away. Sometimes, he said, after listening to someone describe a stranger—a friend or enemy or relative—he’d try to wear that person like a shirt, slipping into their posture or anger or laughter or manner of speaking. That’s the part that was practice.
“I didn’t know Fletcher too well,” I admitted. “I don’t remember the way he spoke. He was kind of shy. Kind of flinchy.”
“That’s okay,” Joshua said, standing up. “I’ll show you with Lionel.”
“Why?”
“It’s easy if I know the people in person.” Joshua grabbed a baseball cap from the closet and clamped it down over his hair and slung his thumbs through his belt loops. He inhaled deeply and seemed to inflate a little. In an instant, he’d captured Lionel’s way of standing exactly.
“Hey there, little lady,” Joshua drawled, taking half a swagger forward. “What draws you out of yonder holler?”
“Stop,” I said. “That’s scary. I mean, it’s good. It’s perfect.”
Joshua looked pleased. He took off the hat and stooped a little. He shuffled a few feet, then turned to me and pointed. “Do I know you?” he asked, all cantankerous now.
“The guy at the AA meeting,” I said.
“Homer,” Joshua said. Now he stood up straight. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and ran a hand through his hair. It was clear he was nervous—or acting nervous. “So, Leanne,” he said.
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said.
He picked up Vince’s stapler, then set it down, then looked around the room.
“I still don’t know. Someone nervous?”
“Max!” Joshua said, like it should have been obvious.
“But you made him look all fidgety.”
“He is,” Joshua said.
“No, he’s not,” I told him. “I don’t see that at all.”
“Oh, right. Max is perfect,” Joshua said, back inside his own voice. He came over to Vince’s bed and dropped on his stomach beside me. “So show me your skeletons.”
Joshua pointed to everyone in my high school class, and even some of my teachers, and for each one, made me tell a story or admit a crush or grudge or say what had become of the person.
“Him?” Joshua said, pointing at a picture of Butch McAfee, whom I’d admitted was my junior-year prom date.
“It’s not his best picture,” I explained.
“I hope not.” He glanced over at me. “You could do better.”
“Butch was nice. He sent me love poems.”
“Butch wanted to get into your pants,” Joshua said. I kicked him. “What? He was sixteen! That’s what sixteen-year-old guys want. Trust me. I was one.”
I frowned.
“It doesn’t mean that he didn’t mean what he wrote. Just that there was a motive.”
“They were really bad poems,” I admitted.
“Leanne,” Joshua said. “You make me want to get a van, Leanne.”
“Stop it,” I told him, but he only gained steam.
“For you I’m working on my tan, Leanne.”
“Go ahead then,” I said. “I’m not listening.”
“I’m making a romantic plan. I must insist on being your man. You know I am your favorite fan, Leanne.” Joshua laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes.
“They weren’t that bad,” I said, soon as I managed to stop laughing, too.
That was Joshua’s fortieth day.
The next time I went to work, I found myself watching Mr. Bellevue—as he answered his phone or commiserated with a courthouse secretary about the construction that required a detour onto Fountain Street. I made a list of things I hadn’t noticed before. He always straightened his tie before correcting someone. He kept only felt-tip pens in the mug on his desk. When he asked you a question, he’d look at you the whole time you were answering.
I didn’t know what such details told me. They surely didn’t draw an entire person. Could a stranger see Mr. Bellevue’s double-knotted laces and know that he was kind? Could you tell by his slightly shuffled walk that he was lonely? I wondered what Joshua Reed would make of the list. If I did the same for myself, what would that show?
I thought of Momma and how I might describe her. I thought of Tommy. I thought of Vince. I skimmed the list of Mr. Bellevue’s details and realized that I couldn’t make a like one for Vince. I’d lost the ability to describe him. When he was younger, before the accident, I could have done it by heart—the sound of his laugh, the way he’d toss a ball from one hand to the next. But now I wondered whether I would even recognize him, if I’d even recognize his voice, were he to step up to the counter and apply for a hunting permit.
“I know something you don’t,” Joshua said. It was Tuesday, that next week. He winked at Beau Ray.
“He knows something you don’t,” Beau Ray said.
“I doubt that,” I told them both. That Tuesday had been the first day of bass fishing season, and I was beat from dealing with license applications all day. “Momma home?”
“They’re out back,” Joshua said. “You don’t want to know what I know?”
“What?” I turned to him. “What do you know?”
“Maybe I won’t tell you,” he said. “Beau Ray, should I tell her?”
“Tell her,” Beau Ray said. He clapped his hands together.
“I should tell her who stopped by?”
“Who stopped by?” I asked.
“So now you want to know?” Joshua asked. I saw him wink at Beau Ray.
“Smax,” Beau Ray said.
“Max stopped by?” I asked.
“I told you she’d want to know,” Joshua said.
“Why did he stop by?” I asked. “Did he say?”
Joshua shrugged. “He asked if you were here, and when I said you weren’t, he didn’t seem terribly interested in keeping me company.”
“I was at the store,” Beau Ray said.
“What did he say?”
“Who? Beau Ray?” Joshua asked. “He said he was at the store.”
“You know who I mean,” I said.
“Oh, Max? What did Max say? Just to tell you he stopped by.” Then Joshua put on his best Josiah Whitcomb accent. “Leanne, I do believe you’re sweet on that fella,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t.
For one, Judy’d been right. I’d had a thing for Max pretty much since I was eight and he was twelve, and that’s a long time for anyone to fan a flame. Sure, my infatuation had waxed and waned at various times—like junior year when Butch was plying me with his bad poems. Or senior year, when I was positive I’d found my match in Howard Malkin (before I found out about him and Loreen). Or when I thought that Otto, who worked as assistant to the assistant county prosecutor, was almost certainly my Mr. Right. And of course I’d set myself to simmer all the time Max was married to Charlene. Like I said, I’m a pretty realistic person. I never figured I’d come out the winner in heart-to-heart combat with the likes of a former Miss Junior West Virginia.
But maybe I’d been simmering too long. Or, holding to the stovetop metaphor, maybe the pilot light had blinked out, but I’d overlooked it. Maybe what I’d taken for a slow burn was instead a long, covered cool-down. Sometimes I wondered if I liked Max because I’d always liked Max, and it was a habit, like chewing on the end of a pen.
Maybe Max would have been right for me a year earlier. Or even six months before. Maybe it was Joshua being there. In our fight on the Fourth of July, Joshua had said some cutting things about my life being small. Part of it, most of it even, had been hot blood talking. But some of his words had sunk in, more and more as the days passed. Did I really want to hunker down with someone who was never going to leave Pinecob? I’d had an ambitious to-do list before the bad luck settled over our house. If I fell for some guy who was never going to leave Pinecob…at least, that’s what I found myself itching about.
Timing really is everything, because of course all this started moving through my mind around the time Max seemed to be emerging from his Charlene fog. Sandy was fit to be tied when I stopped by her house late the same day Max had paid his visit.
“You’re impossible!” she said. “You did the exact same thing with Otto!”
“That’s totally different,” I explained. “I liked Otto from across the hall, and when he started talking to me a lot, that’s when I realized he had that smell I couldn’t stand. Max doesn’t smell anything like Otto. Max smells, well, clean.”
Sandy shrugged.
“You remember Brennie?” I asked her.
In high school, when Sandy and I were sophomores, Brennie Critchett was a senior and nearabout the most beautiful, have-it-together girl around. At the time, I thought she barely touched the ground. More than idolized her, I wanted to be her. I used to keep track of what she wore, then try to hunt out the same clothes. Of course, they never looked the same on me.
“Remember back when we were seniors, around Christmastime, and I saw her at the Winn-Dixie?” I asked Sandy.
She shrugged.
“She was walking with some other girl, and I snuck up behind and heard them talking about how Brennie had been kicked out of college for grades, because all she ever did was sit around and get stoned.”
Sandy slowly nodded, like she was remembering. “Oh right,” Sandy said. “So you think that because Max went out with Brennie a few times that if you go out with Max, he’s going to sit around and get stoned? Or you are?”
“I forgot that Max went out with her,” I said.
That wasn’t it, of course. Max had been, for me, a similar sort of pedestal crush, and I’d begun to wonder whether he wasn’t best left untested. As soon as the guy on a pedestal starts to return the favor, he grows way too human. He needs things, he whines, and it changes the balance. I knew that Max couldn’t always smell clean.
“What if it turns out he bores me? What if he’s a bad kisser?” I asked Sandy.
“You’re not serious!” Sandy said.
“Besides, I don’t even know whether he likes me at all. Maybe he’s been nice because I’m Beau Ray’s little sister, or because I’ve got Joshua Reed in my house, or because he feels bad for blowing me off three years back.”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.”
“He ran into traffic for a dog!” Sandy said. She sounded fed up. “Is this because of Joshua? Did he say something to you? Did he make a move?”
“No,” I said. But I did think of Joshua acting out Max, all fidgety. Max had always been the body of confidence to me. Had I been making that part up?
“Did you make a move?” Sandy pressed.
“No!” I said. “No one made any moves on anyone.” I stood up and paced Sandy’s bedroom. “But maybe. I don’t know.”
“What?” Sandy insisted. “Pull on that thread.”
“It’s just that, Joshua and I are finally getting along, you know?”
“And you think—”
“Let me do the pulling,” I told her. “It’s not what you think. He’s been really nice, recently. You know, interested in my life and family and asking about my job and helping me choose classes for next semester.”
“Classes? Plural?”
I nodded. “Judge Weintraub talked to Momma about it and she agreed. I’m going to go half-time,” I said.
“Finally!” Sandy said. “But back to Max.”
“So, right, Joshua’s been, you know, supportive. And don’t get me wrong—he’s never said anything down-mouth about Max. But he did say something that got me to thinking about whether I want to stay in Pinecob for that much longer.”
“And you think that if you start to date Max…”
“Not that we’d even last a month or anything, but what if I hang back on account of him and miss my chance? It’s hard enough to think about leaving when it’s just my family.”
“Where would you go to? New York?” Sandy asked.
I slumped down beside her on her bed. “I have no idea,” I said. I knew that Sandy was taking all this in and would spit back something I could use. She was good at that. She always figured things through.
“Well,” she said. “You don’t have to decide anything this minute. But there’s no way Max Campbell is a bad kisser.”
I didn’t call Max right away, after he’d stopped by. My talk with Sandy hadn’t really helped me decide—except to decide not to decide—and that meant avoiding the whole decision-making process, including deciding to call Max. So I didn’t. Besides, Judy was due in town the next day, Wednesday, Joshua’s halfway mark, so there was cleaning after cleaning to do beforehand. Whenever Judy and Lars were around, Momma’s list of “Leanne’s Chores” got longer. I think she wanted to make sure that they were catered to but didn’t like them well enough to do any hostess work herself.
By the time Lars showed up Thursday morning, the chaos those two brought kept me distracted. They got a car to take them to Virginia and took pictures of the fields and old buildings where some of Musket Fire would take place. I wondered if I had passed any of the same spots on my dark Virginia drive. Then they spent hours taking Joshua through the pictures and reviewing script changes and making phone calls and trying to answer their cell phones, which would ring once and then conk out. The only place Judy’s cell phone seemed to work was in the trees out past our backyard.
Momma had written out a list of fancy party food to have on hand for their visit, and since Lars said he’d be willing to drive Joshua to AA that night, I figured I’d use the time to shop. I was checking what other, more normal food we might need when Judy appeared in the kitchen and offered to lend a hand and come along. I didn’t think anything of it, except that it was company and I liked that Judy was choosing to hang out with me special. So we got in the car and drove to the Winn-Dixie.
I didn’t see him in the managers’ office, but a guy in there confirmed that Max was working, so he had to be somewhere nearby. The guy in the office stared at Judy while he told me that, like she was something he’d never set eyes on before. It made me look twice at her, and I noticed that, sometime between her asking to come along and us arriving at the Winn-Dixie, she’d put on makeup.
We started shopping in the produce area. I pointed out where Marcy Thompson of Hollywood Express had cornered me against the apples, and I grabbed an extra bag of carrots for Beau Ray. We ran into Max in the juice aisle. He stood beside a clerk who’d spilled what looked like a bunch of juice concentrate boxes. The floor was covered with a deep purple glaze, and Max and the clerk were watching it spread. The clerk looked worried, but Max wore the beginnings of a grin.
“Hey, Max,” I said.
He looked up and waved. He nodded to the clerk who also looked at us—well, mostly at Judy—before hurrying off.
“Hey, Leanne,” Max said, pointing at the stain. “You’ve come at a special time. We’re trying out the industrial mop.” Then he broke into a certain smile and as soon as he did, most of what I’d said to Sandy and most every excuse I’d made ran clear out of my head. I should have called him, I thought.
“This is Judy,” I said. “Judy, this is Max.”
Judy smiled and shook his hand. “Judy Masterson. I remember you from the Hollywood Express piece. You saved the apples,” she said. She seemed to be watching him very closely.
“They train us in fruit-and-vegetable rescue,” Max said. “Not everyone passes the final exam.”
Judy laughed. “I’m Joshua’s publicist,” she told him.
“Seems like a guy like that would generate enough publicity on his own,” Max said. “He must run you ragged.”
I wondered whether he even knew what a publicist did. Not because Max doesn’t have a good mind, but because I hadn’t known, when I first wrote to Judy. It’s not like there’s a big need for them in Pinecob.
“Oh, I make time for new talent. It’s always an adventure,” she said.
He smiled at her and I was suddenly sorry she’d come along. I wanted to be alone with him, to tell him that I was glad he’d stopped by the house, to say that I wished I had been there.
“Judy’s been in town for the last couple of days,” is what I said instead. “Joshua said you stopped by—I meant to call, but with Judy and Lars here, there’s been a lot to do.”
“No sweat,” Max said. “I was just passing by.” I wondered if he thought I was getting back at him for not calling about South Pacific, three years before. I wondered if maybe I’d been doing that, at least a little bit. But I knew if he’d give me a chance, I wouldn’t do it again.
“So you’re from Pinecob, too?” Judy asked.
“Born and raised,” Max said. “Just like Leanne here.”
“Judy lives in Los Angeles,” I said.
“Malibu,” Judy corrected me.
“I hear it’s nice out there,” Max said. “All that sun. Those palm trees.”
“We’ll have to get you out for a visit,” Judy said. “It’s just a simple airplane ride.” I looked over at her. Nice as she’d always been, she’d never mentioned getting me out to Los Angeles, or Malibu for that matter.
“Yeah, right,” Max said. “Not sure it’s the place for me. I doubt I’d fit in out there.”
I wondered whether Max’s hesitance sprang more from his idea of California or from the flight he imagined taking to get there.
“You never know until you try,” Judy said. “I used to say the same thing. Now I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”
I hated that she was so put-together. I wished I had thought to put on mascara before going to the Winn-Dixie. I watched Judy smile at Max, and I realized that I didn’t know what she was after. Something didn’t feel right, though. I trusted she wasn’t interested in him in the same way I was. Judy and Lars had always struck me as a solid, go-getter couple.
“What happened to your ear?” Judy asked him.
Max raised one hand to his torn-off earlobe.
“He got bit by a dog, isn’t that right?” I said. “It wasn’t his fault or anything,” I added.
“Leanne knows all about my sordid past,” Max said to Judy. “Killer poodle.”
“Ouch!” Judy said. “But it makes a great story.”
“Long list?” Max asked me. “Sardines?”
“Not today,” I said. “Fancy olives and cheese mostly. But I could use some inspiration for Beau Ray’s birthday party.”
“Oh, right. Another July birthday for you to get through. First the nation and now Beau Ray.”
“In two weeks,” I said. “Can you believe he’ll be thirty? You guys are getting old.”
“Aw, don’t say that,” Max said.
“Thirty? Really?” Judy said. “You don’t look a day over twenty-five.”
“I don’t know about that.” He laughed. “I could arrange for the bakery to do a cake and bring it by when I come to the party,” Max said. “You want me to do that?”
“That’d be great,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”
“I am invited, right?” Max asked.
“I’m sure you are!” Judy said, before I could make a sound.
Judy and Lars left on Friday to return to Los Angeles—or Malibu, I guess, if you want to be a stickler about it. Judy said she’d be back in two weeks time, when preproduction for Musket Fire was scheduled to begin and there was publicity to be made and managed. Before leaving, she reminded me that the fan club’s summer newsletter still hadn’t gone out, and could I get it done before she came back. It wasn’t really a question.
I’d been avoiding writing the newsletter, and I knew it. Usually, I sent the summer letter out in late June, but there it was mid-July and I hadn’t yet begun. It wasn’t a huge task or anything. Mostly cutting and pasting pictures and articles. But I knew that the “Joshua in the news” section would have to include his arrest and punishment, and I wasn’t sure how best to frame that.
That Saturday morning after Judy left, Joshua and I were eating breakfast in the dining room. He’d been reading the paper when he looked over at me.
“Nice to have the place to ourselves again,” he said.
I was surprised and also flattered. I thought he enjoyed hanging out with Lars and Judy. I thought he would have appreciated visitors, and I said as much.
“Oh, they’re fine,” he said. “They’re just so demanding, you know? It’s like everything that isn’t L.A. Is wrong. It’s too hot or too humid or it’s so green, as if there’s something wrong with that.” I just stared at him, I think, because he laughed and said, “I know, I know. Me saying that.”
“What are you going to do today?” I asked him. Lars had left a new pile of scripts, and I figured that Joshua would probably lie in the sun and flip through them.
“What are you going to do?” he asked back.
I told him I was fixing to draft his fan club newsletter.
“Can I help?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure whether he was serious or not, but figured I might as well find out.
We went down to the basement after breakfast, and I showed him the spring edition as an example.
“You did this?” he asked. “I never saw this.”
“Judy okays them, then I send them out.”
“This is funny,” he said, pointing to a quiz I had written, asking fan club members which outfit Joshua Reed had not worn in one of his film roles. The choices were a tartan kilt, a toga, surgical scrubs or a cowboy hat and chaps. A lot of people had guessed the kilt, forgetting that he’d had that cameo role in the Scottish thriller, Bagpipe Dreams. The answer was a toga.
“It’s part of the job,” I said while he read through. I was embarrassed just then that I knew so many of his details, as if for the past seven years, I’d been his official stalker or something. When I’d started running the fan club, Joshua Reed felt almost like a made-up person, like a fairy-tale prince, some sort of dashing composite of the characters he played. The more real he became, the more the fan club seemed like a job. But now he was no longer 3,000 miles away, and keeping tabs on his career and coming up with trivia and being an overall cheerleader with Joshua there in front of me—that didn’t seem like something that someone with a full life would spend time on.
“How do we start?” he asked. I pulled out my most recent file of clippings and handed them over.
“Go through this, and separate out whatever pictures you want to include.”
The newsletter always had the same basic parts to it. There was the “picture page” where I photocopied pictures of Joshua taken from magazines and newspapers (plus any publicity stills Judy might have sent). There was the “Joshua in the news” section where I listed all the articles I’d found, with little blurb descriptions, so that anyone who’d missed an interview somewhere would know about it. I figured that’s what they paid fifteen dollars a year for, and that’s what I set to working on. There was also the “trivia corner,” with lesser-known information about Joshua (that’s where I’d stuck the quiz). And usually there would be a listing of appearances Joshua was scheduled to make (benefits, store openings, movie premieres, press conferences—Judy always sent me the dates and I’d paste them in. That’s how come I knew Joshua had never been to West Virginia).
“Now what?” he asked. He handed me the photos he’d chosen.
“I guess there can’t really be an appearances list this time,” I said.
“I appeared in court,” he offered. “Twice.”
“I’m not sure Judy would approve that.”
“I know I don’t have anything on my slate for the next forty days. Unless you count AA.”
“Which is supposed to be anonymous,” I reminded him, although judging by the newfound popularity of the Tuesday and Thursday meetings, that didn’t seem to be the case.
“You could interview me. Or I could write something,” Joshua suggested.
“Like what?” I asked.
He shrugged. “What do people ask about?” he asked. “I could tell some story I don’t usually tell. Something exclusive. People love exclusives.”
“What about something from Rackett?” I suggested. “You never talk about that.”
Joshua frowned.
“Or not,” I said. “Maybe you had a pet growing up?”
He didn’t respond.
“Or something about you and your sister, when you were little?”
Joshua frowned again. It was obvious I wasn’t hitting on anything he wanted to share with his public.
“You know, I’ve never seen anything on how you picked the name Reed.”
“I don’t suppose you have,” he said finally.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure I can think of something to fill the space,” I said quickly. Something in his mood had gone dark, and I wished I could find the switch to bring him back. “I didn’t mean for it to be hard. I can do the newsletter myself.”
“My sister’s best friend growing up was a girl named Jackie Reed,” Joshua said. “I had a huge thing for her.”
“Jackie Reed?”
He nodded and smiled softly, like he was remembering her. “I got to kiss her once. Late at night. She was staying over and my sister was asleep.”
“And?” I asked. “What then?”
“Nothing. She just let me kiss her. But only once. Said that would have to be it. Even then, she knew she didn’t want to get too close to my family. Smart girl. Man, she was something. I could look at her for hours.”
“She was your Brennie,” I said.
“My what?”
“Everyone’s got those people they wish they could keep near and maybe actually be at the same time. For whatever reason. Girl or guy.”
“And it’s called a Brennie? You have people like that?” he asked. He sounded surprised.
“Everyone does.”
He looked like he hadn’t considered this before.
“I bet to a lot of people, you’re that person.”
“Now, that’s scary,” Joshua said.
“So did Jackie Reed stay as great as all that?” I asked. I was thinking about Brennie Critchett. She lived on the far side of Pinecob, out by Paulie’s family’s farm. After she dropped out of college, she had taken a job as a greeter at the Charles Town Supermart, which only required her to greet people with a smile. She wasn’t very good at it.
Joshua smiled, sort of sad. “I don’t know. But probably not,” he said. “She married some guy I heard slapped her around a little. My sister lost touch with her. But I liked her name, so I took it. It reminds me to remember her.”
“We could write up that story. Only, not the part about her getting hit.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said.
“So I’ve got a question,” I told him.
He had gone back to leafing through the picture file. “What’s that?” Joshua asked.
“When you introduce yourself, what do you say?”
He looked over at me. “What do you mean?”
“I notice how sometimes you ask people to call you Josh. I know that Judy calls you J.P.—”
“She’s known me a long time,” he said. “No one but her and people from home—I mean, Rackett—call me J.P.”
“You never asked me to call you Josh, and I was wondering,” I said. “I always call you Joshua.”
“You can call me whatever you want,” he said. “Joshua, Josh, whatever.” He looked at me, a little closer. “What?
“It seems like Josh is what your friends call you, but you never said ‘call me Josh,’ not to me.”
“Leanne,” Joshua Reed said. “Maybe I like the sound of it when you say Joshua.”
I tried to see through him. I thought he was probably lying, or acting, or whatever you’d call it when you’re trying to make someone feel better.
“Call me Josh, if you want. Or Joshua. Or J.P. Or Hey You. Whatever you want. I’ll answer to whatever you want.”
“Now anything is going to sound weird,” I told him.
“You asked,” he said, but he smiled.
Maybe timing is everything, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it. Me, I hated that timing was everything.
That next day, Sunday, I went to the Winn-Dixie fully expecting to see Max, all set to suggest we go see a movie since I didn’t know of any musicals that were playing. In the managers’ office was the same guy who’d been so taken by Judy during my last visit. I recognized him. He was the assistant cheese manager.
“Max in?” I asked him.
“Where’s that lady you were here with a couple days ago?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She live around here?” he asked.
I said nowhere near. I told him that Judy lived in California.
“California.” He said it like it was a place in a dream.
“Malibu,” I said.
“Malibu,” he repeated, the syllables playing off his tongue.
“So, is Max in?” I asked again.
The assistant cheese manager looked back at me. His eyes were flat again, like I’d interrupted something.
“He’s out all week,” he said.
I felt like such a dolt. It was like the two halves of my brain had two different places to be. I knew that Max would be gone all week because he was where Beau Ray was, and Beau Ray was gone all week. Duh. That’s why carrots weren’t on my list.
Lionel, Scooter, Max, Paulie and Beau Ray were all at Lionel’s family’s lake cabin. It was a yearly thing the guys did, always midsummer. They’d fish and drink and do God knows what else for a full seven days, coming back all unshaven and bleary. Even Max probably didn’t smell clean at the end of those weeks. Normally, I’d have hated that sort of thing, but they never once failed to include Beau Ray, so how resentful could I really be?
The following Tuesday, when I picked up Joshua after his AA meeting at the high school, he was grinning like he’d taken home first-prize, though I was pretty sure Mr. Pearson didn’t give out ribbons or trophies.
“What?” I asked him.
“I talked,” he said. “Back in there. I stood up and talked.”
I told him I thought that was great.
“It is great. I don’t do much improv, but I thought, screw it, I can do this. Leanne did it. Homer does it. I can do it.”
“What did you say?” I asked him.
“You know how it goes. I said my name. I said ‘My name’s Joshua’ and that I figured that most people probably already knew why I was there, but it was because I’d gotten my second DUI. You know, I told my story. Not all of it, but some.”
“That’s really great, Joshua,” I said. I had decided to stick with calling him Joshua.
“I talked a little bit about Rackett and how I was staying with you, and that you and your family had been totally cool to me, and how the summer’s been a lot different than I thought it would be.”
“Different?”
“In a good way,” he assured me. “That I’ve been reading a lot but also getting a lot of thinking done. You know, Elise told me that she thought I needed to focus on getting myself together. At the time, I figured it was just shrink bullshit. Actually, coming from her, I’m sure it was. But still, it’s worked out that way. I’m so much clearer about what I want to do when I get back to L.A., what I’m going to focus on.”
He was smiling, but that’s when it hit me: Joshua was going to leave. The ninety days would end and he would return to California. Part of my brain must have known it. Of course, I’d known it, but as he spoke, it still came at me like a surprise. Were we all expected to go back to the way we were before? How could we go back?
The next night, Sandy and I went for a beer at the Buccaneer. It was the one night she had off between weeks of fourteen-hours on. Alice was coming from Hagerstown to stay with her the following week, so at least they would be able to see each other, even when Sandy was tired.
Loreen arrived at our booth straightaway. I watched her walk up and wondered if anything had happened between her and Paulie after the Fourth of July party.
“Hey Sandy,” she said. And then to me, “So I did it. I asked him out.”
I knew immediately she wasn’t talking about Paulie. And she was smiling this smile, like she was so proud of herself.
“Oh, yeah? Good for you,” I said. But I was only acting casual.
“Who are we talking about?” Sandy asked. Neither of us answered her.
“How’d it go?” I asked Loreen. “What’d he say?”
She shrugged. “I guess he’s already dating someone,” Loreen said. “You know who?”
“Who’s this?” Sandy asked again.
“Max Campbell,” Loreen told her.
“I don’t know,” I said. “First I’ve heard of that.” I looked into my beer, then up at Sandy, who had already started looking sorry for me. She was getting a lot of use out of that particular expression.
“Oh, well,” Loreen said. “Can’t be too serious if no one knows who it is.”
“I’m dating someone and no one knows who,” Sandy said. “Maybe Max is seeing someone out of town.” I looked over at Sandy like she was no help at all.
“Maybe,” Loreen said. “But whoever she is better hold on tight. I heard Charlene’s coming back through town next week.”
“Charlene?” I asked.
“You know, his ex,” Loreen said.
I knew who she was. I felt my face sag.
Sandy turned to Loreen. “What did he say exactly?”
Loreen shrugged again. “I said, you want to go out sometime and he said, oh, that would be cool except he was starting to date someone else just now.”
“Starting to,” Sandy said, mostly to me.
“Well, good for you,” I told Loreen. “For asking, I mean. So I guess you and Paulie aren’t going to be a thing?” I hated that we both liked the same guy, again. It felt like Pinecob was closing in.
“Get real. Paulie’s just a filler. Hey, he’s cute,” Loreen said, looking at some guy shooting pool. “See you two later.”
“If you’d been at the Fourth of July party, you’d know all this,” I told Sandy.
“If you’d known about it to begin with and invited me,” she said.
“She told me she was thinking of asking him out. I wasn’t going to say, no wait, I like him, you can’t. It doesn’t work that way.”
“I wonder who he’s dating,” Sandy said.
“If Charlene’s back in town, it won’t matter.”