Yes, I had fallen in love with you, Pete, and yet, on the last day of school before summer vacation, 1982, I signed off my final note to Hannah with the little crossed swords of a kiss, placing the piece of paper in her locker so that she would find it toward the end of the day. It wasn’t an especially gallant act, I’ll admit, considering the feelings I’d developed elsewhere, but I wish the world good luck ever finding a teenage boy whose body is exploding with honorable hormones.
Just before she climbed onto her school bus for the last time in seventh grade, Hannah turned, her eyes locating me alongside Tricky. The look she gave me was something I hadn’t seen from her before, as if that kiss at the end of my note had prompted something. There was nothing glacial about this change—while Hannah’s kiss a few months earlier had been innocent, the look in her eyes on my last ever day of school certainly was not. What a look, and oh how it thrilled me—considerably more than anything Christie Laing had ever done. Hannah’s burning blue eyes made me feel breathless with a deep and powerful sense of lust.
* * *
AS FAR AS I WAS concerned, there was nothing wrong with wanting both you and Hannah at the same time. I still feel that way to this day.
When I lay in bed at night, having the same thoughts I’m sure most teenage boys do, I would think about you both and picture you both—not at the same time, but sometimes both on the same night—and while the feelings might have been different, the biological response was exactly the same.
For Hannah, I felt a kind of urgent rush of desire. Thinking about her as I lay beneath my bedcovers was an intense multisensory experience. Those bright eyes, the way she laughed, the feel of her lips. I swear I could even smell her scent in the darkness of my bedroom, a kind of female musk that drove me wild and left me feeling short of breath, my lust for her so fierce I could taste it. I wanted my skin on her skin, my mouth against hers, our bodies joined together as one.
However, the feelings I had for you, Pete, were deeper. When it came to you, it felt as if it were not just the weakness in my flesh that desired you, but the strength inside my bones. You were something of the soul, filling a hollow place inside of me. I didn’t only crave you like a drug, I needed you like air, like a fish needs water.
I know what most people would think if they were ever to read these words. They would say that you were a father figure, that my feelings were misplaced because my desire for your love bloomed from the fact that my own father didn’t love me, didn’t like me, wanted even to hurt me, but I don’t care what people think. I always loved you for you, Pete, and if you happened to fill a father-size hole in my life, if that made me love you even more, then so be it.
You see, it isn’t always this way around when it comes to who I love in the world—the urgent lust for women, the deep longing for men. I’ve craved men in that same feverish way I yearned for Hannah as a teenage boy, and I’ve loved women deep down in my bones, in the place that makes me worship another human being for their heart, for their mind, for the sense of something magical in their soul.
So let no one ever call you a father figure, Pete. Labels are for soup cans, just like you said. I won’t ever let another human being label me.
I love who I love, that’s all there is to it. Don’t we all? Why should something like that need a word? I can’t see why people find this so hard to understand.
Perhaps they’re afraid. Afraid of what? I was never afraid.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, TRICKY’S PARENTS took us out for breakfast to celebrate the end of school, me and Tricky, Tricky’s brother Sean, and Sean’s best friend and next-door neighbor, a boy named Kyle.
Tricky’s dad offered to pick me up from home, but I didn’t want the McConnells seeing the dump in which I lived, so I rode my bike over to theirs instead, and then we headed out, four boys in the back of a blue Chevy Impala, just about sitting in each other’s laps, my face smooshed up against a window. The route took us along a few streets in town I hadn’t been down before. There were kids shooting hoops on their drives, sprinklers sprinkling lawns, all the usual, and then, on a street called Tall Pines Road, before we made the turn onto Main Street, I saw something that made me look twice—it was parked in a driveway, a green truck with a large decal of a gold maple leaf set in a gold triangle adorning its side. It was your Swangum Conservancy truck, Pete.
I was still making sure I’d remember the location when Tricky’s dad turned onto Main Street and parked up. Hey, look at that, he said, so pleased with himself you’d have thought he’d just won the election. The perfect spot, he said, right across the street.
Even with my face smooshed up against the wrong window, I knew what was behind me, right across the street.
Everyone squeezed out of the car, and then I stood there, just staring over the road at the Blue Moon diner with a feeling like there was a rock lodged in my gut.
It was Tricky’s mom who noticed me hanging back.
What’s wrong, Matthew?
Nothing, Mrs. McConnell. Just … my mom works here, that’s all.
Oh, she said, turning to Tricky’s dad, everyone else hovering by the crosswalk. Joe, she called out, her voice half an octave higher than it needed to be, did you know Matthew’s mom works at the Blue Moon?
Joe McConnell was fingering his car keys. Well, we don’t have to, I mean …
It’s fine, I said, no, it’s good. She wants to meet you, Joe … sorry, Mr. McConnell. She said she’s thinking of voting for you.
Well, that’s nice, said Joe. Isn’t that nice, Carrie?
In the diner, I sat at one end of the moon-blue banquette next to Tricky. Opposite us, Sean and Kyle were playing some childish game they’d come up with, blowing paper sleeves from straws as far as they could, and then everything proceeded to go as badly as I’d imagined it would, my mom spotting us and hurrying over, fixing her hair and her apron, and then becoming all deferential to Tricky’s parents, while Tricky’s parents acted like the three of them were old buddies from college. At some point, Sean O’Connell asked my mom if it was true that waitresses spat in the drinks of customers they didn’t like, and when the time came to order food, Kyle asked for a club sandwich and then sent it back because he didn’t know there was tomato in a club sandwich. All the while, my mom, a nervous smile nailed to her face, fussed around us like she was proud of me—not for anything about me as a human being, mind, but simply for having made it into the company of such esteemed Roseborn royalty. Then Kyle sent back his sandwich a second time because all they did was pull out the tomato and he said he could still taste it, but worst of all, as my mom was clearing away the plates, Carrie McConnell said to her, Listen, Patricia … Please, call me Pat.… Oh isn’t that nice. Well, Pat, we’d love to have you and your husband over to dinner sometime, what with our sons being such good friends. What do you think?
Sure, said my mom, in her broadest Queens, we’d love to have dinner with the both of you. We’ll bring the liquor and make a proper party of it. Hey, Matthew, here’s my pen, write down our number on a napkin for Mrs. O’Connell while I clear the table. Settle up when you like, Joe, no hurry.
I did as I was told, looking up from the napkin to see Joe McConnell throwing down singles one by one, making a slow, ostentatious show of leaving a generous tip, and then at last we got the hell out of that place.
As for that dinner party? Well, praise be to God, Pete, that such an enchanting soirée would never actually happen, which was just one of many good things to result from the fact that my daddy had only a short time left on this planet. Amen!
* * *
I NOTICED YOUR TRUCK WAS no longer outside your house when we drove back to the McConnells along Tall Pines Road. Tricky and his family were headed down to Westchester to visit relatives later that day. I thought about riding up to the Swangums and trying to find you, but I knew you’d be working and it didn’t seem right, so I just headed home.
After that painful hour in the diner, home looked twice as ugly as before, a huge array of crap in the front yard that any visitor would have to wade through before they could get to the front door. Hubcaps and I beams and oil drums, a whole bunch of lumber, an old rumble seat, half a tractor …
There were two tall piles of old broken pallets leaning against one side of the house, and whenever I was worried about whether my daddy was home, I’d make sure to take a quick peek behind them to see if his car was parked there. Only at that point in our lives, my daddy had actually been enjoying a period of unbroken work, his latest job, something at the Jensen Royal Cement plant, getting close to setting an all-time record—seven or eight weeks and he hadn’t been fired. Life was considerably easier to bear whenever my daddy was working, employment cooling his moods a notch or two.
So I didn’t see his car behind the pallet piles. If I had I would have gotten right back on my bike. As I opened the door, still thinking of the horror show back at the diner, finally I laughed at the whole thing, especially the way Joe McConnell had laid down his tip, most of the adults in the world seeming ridiculous to me back then, and that’s when I saw him, my daddy waiting for me on the couch.
What you laughin at, Chuckles? he said.
Nothing, I said.
How bout you set yourself down and tell me all about all this nothin?
I took the armchair farthest away from him.
You hungry? he said.
No, sir.
What? You mean you’ve eaten already?
Yes, sir.
Anythin interestin?
Blueberry pancakes.
Blueberry pancakes? And where’d you go for these blueberry pancakes? he said.
At this point I realized my daddy clearly knew where I’d been. My mom had never been the sort of person to let her brain get in the way of her mouth. My guess is she called him right after we stepped out the door of the diner to tell him the good news about the dinner invitation. God bless her, she probably even thought he’d be excited.
Now I had two choices. I could lie to my daddy and get whupped for being a liar, or I could tell him the truth. My immediate future right now was like a flow chart, this way or that, that way or the other, only this chart was all screwed up because everything ended up landing in the very same box.
So, talking fast and putting it all out there as if it couldn’t possibly mean anything, I said, The McConnells took us to the Blue Moon, and I had pancakes there and Carrie, Mrs. McConnell had them too, and this other boy—
Wait, wait, wait. Blue Moon diner? Did you say Blue Moon?
Yes, sir.
You sayin you let your momma wait on you in front of a whole room of strangers, boy? You went and humiliated her in her place of work? Now wait one goddam minute. Do you think you’re better than your momma, boy?
No, sir.
No, sir? Why, you piece of unholy shit. How’d you think that made your momma feel? All warm inside? You think because you hang around with those McConnells you’re better than us, that it?
No, sir.
No, sir, that’s damn as hell right, sir. Makin your momma wait on you. Probably thinkin like you’re a man now, boy? Women waitin on you. Takes more than that. You wanna know what it feels like to be a man? A real man? You need to be punished, boy. And you gonna be.
I guess I can stop at this point because the precise to and fro won’t add much. Or maybe I just can’t face writing it all down. Besides, you saw the bruises yourself, Pete, how they ran down one side of my body because of the way I was curled up in the armchair.
Anyway, apart from small details, the way it went down that particular day wasn’t much different from all the others.
* * *
I KEPT MY BRUISES HIDDEN from the eyes of the world, only occasionally wearing shorts, the flesh on my arms always concealed beneath long-sleeved T-shirts and sweatshirts. Even if I’d ever learned successfully to roll my shirtsleeves like Tricky, half the time I would have had to keep them buttoned up at the wrist.
My daddy always stayed away from my face, a level of calculation that made him all the more monstrous to my mind. At least there would have been something honest if he’d drunkenly given me a black eye once in a while. Looky here, people, sometimes I hit my son when I’m all good and toasty.
Why did I keep the bruises hidden? It certainly wasn’t because I was ashamed of having been beaten. It takes a hell of a lot to shame me. No, I was ashamed of having a daddy who was a beater, that was the problem.
Right after it happened, I lay on my bed curled up on the side that wasn’t hurting, trying to concentrate on the feel of the blueberry pancakes slipping their way into my stomach. Apparently I’d caused my daddy to be late for work, and as soon as it was over, he left the house, our front door sounding his continued fury, the wheels of his car screaming violently as he pulled onto the road.
A few moments later, little Billy came out of his room, pushed himself up against my back and held me by the shoulder. My daddy had only ever given little Billy a few light cuffs thus far in life. I don’t know if this was because of his age or his Down syndrome. It was a strange relationship my daddy had with Billy’s condition, if another man had ever called my brother Pug, I have little doubt my daddy would’ve propelled the guy to the ER in less than a flash.
Although I liked little Billy being there to comfort me, there was someone else I really wanted lying on my bed with me, only I knew you’d be at work the whole day.
I tried to imagine telling you what had happened, but when I pictured it the words were too hard to get out. Then I imagined me touching one of my sore ribs and me wincing hard enough that you’d notice, and then maybe you’d take me by the arm, concerned, and I’d wince again at your touch. Where else does it hurt? you’d ask me, and I’d start to point, here and here and here, all the way down one side of my body, then you’d lift up my T-shirt and see the first bruise, lift a little higher, another and another, and you’d have to pull the T-shirt all the way over my head to see every one. Finally, you’d kiss my bruises better, Pete, that’s what I wanted you to do, and in return, I would have done anything to make you happy, anything at all.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY I’D ARRANGED to ride up to the Swangums with Tricky, both of us thinking this was the start of a whole summer ahead of us, not totally unlike the summer before, two boys adventuring in the mountains—although obviously on Sundays I was planning to be up there with someone else.
I was too distracted to really enjoy myself, not that Tricky would’ve noticed, but we stayed in the mountains until late afternoon anyway. I don’t remember much of what we did that day, probably played a few of our games, Houdini, perhaps, which Tricky was better at, not only because he’d learned to tie various knots, but also because he was so much smaller than me, making it easier for him to wriggle free.
At some point in the late afternoon, we headed homeward and were coasting down Grist Mill Road, closing in on town, when your green truck drifted by with all the windows wound down. Have fun, boys, I heard you call out.
Tricky and I split up on Main Street, right after the turn by O’Sullivan’s Dive Inn, but instead of heading home, I stopped and watched Tricky turn left and disappear from view. Knowing that you were probably home now, I decided to pay you a visit.
* * *
I REMEMBER THINKING THAT YOUR place on Tall Pines Road looked like the kind of cabin you might find in a fairy-tale forest, the wood stained brick red, your house with green-painted shutters and a green front door. I walked my bike over your trim lawn and left it by the porch steps. I was about to go up to your front door and knock when I saw a light breaking from under a shade that hadn’t been pulled all the way down. There was a gap about as wide as a mail slot, and seeing it I had this feeling that I wanted to know what you did all alone in your home, so I knelt by the window and peeked under the shade and there you were, boots kicked off on the rug, lowering a glass of red wine onto a blanket chest placed like a coffee table in front of an armchair. I’d never seen a man with a glass of wine before. You were still wearing your dust-colored Conservancy work shirt.
Your home was only one room, but it wasn’t small exactly, more like a kind of large open space. I could see an armchair, a couch, a pine dresser, your kitchen … I couldn’t see any kind of bed, but then I noticed a ladder that led to a loft, so presumably it was up there. I imagined it all cozy, one side of your bed hugged by the pitch of the roof, and then, while I was marveling at everything, you started unbuttoning your shirt. I breathed in sharply, quickly becoming transfixed, every newly unfastened button spiking my excitement higher and higher. When you arched your spine, reaching back to pull the sleeves from your arms, the motion thrust your chest forward. It was a strong chest, not overdone like a bodybuilder’s, and lightly forested with dark, wiry hair. You folded the shirt and took it over to the dresser, leaving it on top and taking something out of a drawer. All of your muscles were firm and compact. Then you pulled on a T-shirt, returned to the spot by the armchair, and picked up the wineglass, drinking from it and then tipping back your head before breathing out. Returning the glass to the surface of the blanket chest, you sat down in the armchair and picked up a copy of National Geographic from the floor, sinking back into the upholstery as you read, almost disappearing from view.
I stood up awkwardly, feeling breathless and faint. I had to wait almost a minute before I could knock on your door.
* * *
MATTHEW, YOU SAID, WITH NOTHING but delight in your voice.
I spotted your truck, I said.
Really? you said. And you tracked me down from that one clue alone? So which one of the Hardy boys are you?
Man, that’s the worst show on TV, I said. My little brother loves it.
You’re supposed to read the books, kid.
I pulled a goofy face, and then said in a dopey voice, But I can’t read, sir. Got rocks in my head. Don’t know who coulda put them there.
You leaned against the doorjamb and folded your arms. Remind me, you said, how was it I ended up with the freshest kid in town? Am I not keeping you from a more pressing engagement?
Nope, I said.
So you think I’m just going to invite you in?
Yep, I said.
You beckoned me forward. You’ve got more cheek than a chipmunk, you said as I passed.
Stepping inside your home, the first thing I noticed was the dense, overpowering presence of wood—and by wood I mean real wood. My own home was full of wood as well, only it was all just veneer, most of it curling away from the particleboard underneath. You could have peeled all the wood from our house like the skin from an orange.
When you turned on a lamp, the whole place glowed like a campfire. I noticed a cast-iron stove with split logs piled up below. At the edge of the room there was an old wooden workbench that you’d used for a sideboard, covering it with photos and candlesticks and vases full of cattails and pussy willow. All of the furniture was old and dented—there must have been a thousand stories carved into all that timber. The scent inside was heavenly.
What is this place? I said. A goddam museum?
You stepped past me, toward the armchair. I built it myself, you said. What do you think?
Everything feels so old in here, I said.
Appropriate for a sad old man then, you said, lowering yourself stiffly into your armchair for comic effect.
I sat down on the couch. You’re not sad, I said.
You laughed. You’re not rebutting my use of the word old then.
There’s nothing wrong with old, I said. I’m old.
You gave me an odd look.
It’s true, I said, I feel a hundred years older than everyone at school. I’m old as hell.
I started to look around at your walls, which were covered in art frames, but when I looked closer, I realized it wasn’t art that you’d framed but a whole bunch of religious mottoes, lines from the Bible, all of them rendered in cross-stitch. The one nearest me read, The Lord is my shepherd—Psalm 23, and beneath the words stood a sheep embroidered in big boxy stitches like video game pixels. It looked like the kind of thing you’d blast to smithereens on Tricky’s Atari.
There must have been ten or a dozen of those framed verses on your walls. I got up and wandered around the room peering at them.
God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all—1 John 1:5 (That one, I seem to remember, was illustrated with a stitched lighthouse.) For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son—John 3:16 (The picture beneath was of a cross-stitched cross.)
You watched me looking around and said, You’ve discovered my collection of samplers then.
You collect this crap? I said, standing under the cross.
Not collect, exactly, you said. My grandmother, God bless her soul, she sewed all of these. Mildred Mae, tough old bird, grew up picking blueberries in the Swangums. And when they couldn’t make enough money from blueberries, they set fire to the mountainside and got paid to help put out the blaze. The fires were good for the blueberries as well, as it happens.
I went back to the couch and sat down.
Can I get you a drink? you said. I might have some 7UP in the fridge.
I’ll take some of that wine you’re having, I said.
You shot me a look and said, suspiciously, I don’t know, are you sure you’re eighteen?
Goddammit, I said, going by age is so stupid. Some kids are older than other kids around the same age, I said. Like with Tricky, right? I feel like I’m about fifty years of age whenever I’m around him.
Tricky, he’s the one who likes to sketch the water right, the boy I saw you with cycling down Grist Mill Road just now?
I nodded. That’s him, I said.
So Tricky’s your little brother right, the one who likes the Hardy boys?
Hell no, I said, Tricky and me are in the same class at school.
You narrowed your eyes. Wait, so you and he are…? You stopped to take in a sharp breath. My God, you said, how old are you, Matthew?
I’m fourteen, I said, sounding immensely proud of the number.
Fourteen?
I know, I said, not noticing the way you spoke my age, or how you were turning very pale. Everyone normally guesses maybe seventeen, sometimes eighteen.
You picked up the wineglass, and now I could see that your hand was shaking as you struggled to take a drink. It was still shaking as you put the glass back down on the blanket chest.
That’s when inspiration struck. I snatched up the glass, took a healthy gulp, and then, very deliberately—although trying to make it look like an accident—spilled what was left of the wine down the front of my long-sleeved T-shirt.
Oops! I said.
Christ almighty, you said, your body starting to show signs of panic. Matthew, no, what are your parents going to think if they see this? You rushed up from the armchair and motioned me to raise my arms. Quick, you said, I’ll throw it in the kitchen sink to soak.
I lifted my hands, ready to surrender myself completely, but there was nothing romantic about the way you removed my T-shirt, trying your best not to let your fingers brush so much as a square inch of my skin, pulling it over my head as quickly as you could. Yet still I felt a surge of pleasure, my heart burning for you, my body desperate for your touch. I looked up into your eyes, but you didn’t look down into mine.
You were motionless, standing above me, staring down at the bruised half of my body.
Oh dear God, Matthew, you said. Oh dear God, who did this? Who did this, you poor, poor boy? You moved your trembling hand toward my side, but your fingers stopped short of touching me. I could see the tears forming in your eyes, a single streak falling down your cheek. Taking your hand away from me, you wiped your face and then, as if all the strength had been sucked from your body, you fell back into your chair. How sorely I felt the absence of your lips as you sat there, hands clutching the armrests, with a look of utter defeat on your face, and seeing you so desolate, so monumentally upset at what had happened to me, moved me intensely—moved me perhaps even more than your lips on my bruises might have done. That’s when I felt something I hadn’t experienced since kindergarten, tears welling up behind my eyes, an irresistible force. Soon I started to cry, an audible sob tumbling out of my throat.
Hearing my pain, your eyes shot up and, looking even more hurt, you said, Oh, my poor child, come here. Oh my poor Matthew, come here, come here, you poor child.
I stumbled over to you, your weakness feeling like my weakness now, and collapsed to my knees, my head falling into your lap as I started to cry harder than I’d ever cried in my life, my body shaking, my head shaking, all of my sadness and the hurt of every blow my daddy had ever inflicted on me coming out in one long torrent of tears. You stroked my head and made shushing sounds. Let it all out, you said, let it all out, Matthew. And then you stroked my head some more.
For how long did I continue to cry? Who knows? It was a long time, perhaps long enough to make up for all the tears I hadn’t shed for years, and there wasn’t a single tear left inside me by the time I was done.
When it was over, you lifted my head, held it, and looked into my eyes. Did your father do this to you? you said. When I nodded, you held my head tighter and said to me, You are the greatest of God’s creatures, Matthew, don’t you ever forget that.
It wasn’t cold, but I remember I was shivering. You helped me back to the couch, took a blanket from the back of your armchair, and wrapped it around me. Crouching down in a kindly way, you put your hand on my knee, but then an awkwardness came over you and you took your hand away. This is a test, Matthew, you said. For both of us, you understand? He sent you to me, you said, pointing heavenward. I understand it all now, it makes perfect sense. He gave me a sign. You were nodding the way people do when the world suddenly comes to make sense to them. Wait here, Matthew, you said, patting my knee.
You picked up my T-shirt, walked over to the kitchen, dropped the tee in the sink, and turned on the faucet. Then you pulled out a box from under the sink and poured powder into the running water. When you turned off the faucet, you walked over to a bookcase and pulled out the Bible, then came back to sit in your armchair.
I guess I thought you were eighteen, you said. Or hoped, you added. Or perhaps not even eighteen exactly, you said, and I don’t know what age would be right, I honestly don’t, but for some reason that’s what I had in my head. And now I see why, that’s how I know this was a test, Matthew. This was God’s test, you understand?
You opened your Bible and started flicking through the pages. Listen to this, Matthew, you said. This here is Jesus speaking to his disciples. And this is taken from Matthew eighteen, you said, tapping at a spot on the page, Matthew eighteen. Then you cleared your throat and started to read, your voice deepening as you spoke your holy words—
If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell … Matthew eighteen, you said, tapping at the spot on your Bible and breathing easier now, Matthew eighteen.
I felt a powerful presence in the room at that moment. I’m not going to call it God because I didn’t experience the blinding light of conversion in that moment and never have since, but unholy wretch though I am, nonetheless I bless you, Pete, for what you did, for what you didn’t do, and if I’m wrong, if there is a Lord above, I’m damned sure as hell that he blesses you too.
Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin. Who in the world can’t offer an amen to that?
You closed your Bible, held it in your lap and smiled at me. You are the greatest of God’s creatures, you said, and your father will be punished, Matthew, I promise you. I promise you that from the heart. By God’s holy means, he will be punished.
* * *
I STAYED FOR ANOTHER FIFTEEN minutes or so. At some point it occurred to you that I was almost the same size as you, and you pulled a long-sleeved T-shirt from your dresser. It was only slightly loose on me. After that you started to usher me politely out of your cabin—surely it was my dinnertime soon, what if my poor mother was worried? Briefly there grew a sense of unease between us. Outside of my immediate family, you were now the only person who knew my shameful secret, the things my daddy could do with a belt buckle, and even though you thought you’d passed God’s test, there was still a sense of apprehension behind your words and your movements.
Then, as I was heading out the front door, you made a face as if a thought had just come to you in a flash, and you said something about owing someone a favor, changing shifts with a guy at the Conservancy, meaning you wouldn’t be able to see me on Sunday this week. That left me feeling hurt, and probably I was a little ashamed of you having witnessed my tears—I’d never cried like that before, not even when my daddy mustered his worst. So you ushered and I shuffled and you didn’t linger at the door to wave goodbye when I left.
I rode my bike out of town and checked behind the pallets when I got home. My daddy’s car wasn’t there, he was out at O’Sullivan’s, already in pre–July Fourth celebration mode, so I stepped into the house without having to tiptoe.
My mom didn’t notice the T-shirt I was wearing wasn’t my own. She offered to microwave some dinner, spaghetti Bolognese.
The tray spun around in the oven as my mom spoke about her day at the diner. Little Billy was in the living room pretending a screwed-up piece of paper was a football and he was throwing touchdown after touchdown for the Giants. Then my mom said to me, Oh, wait, I nearly forgot, a girl came looking for you today, Matthew. Real cute and with these pretty blue eyes.
Oh yeah? I said. Sounds like Hannah. What did she want?
Hannah, that was it. Not much, asked if you were in. I told her no and she headed away on her bike. Now, honey, do I need to have the talk with you?
You already gave me the talk, Mom.
The microwave pinged. Yeah, well, I heard how she asked for you, all breathless and goo-goo eyes. Maybe you need the talk one more time. Mom opened the microwave and took out my dinner. Here you go, handsome, she said, sliding the tray of spaghetti toward me over the kitchen counter.
Right then, none of this meant very much to me. Hannah had come, Hannah had left, so what? For almost a whole day I would remain blissfully ignorant of the greater significance of this fact. That earlier in the afternoon, riding back home after failing to find me, Hannah had seen me in the distance waiting for Tricky to disappear from view, which also meant I had no idea that Hannah had followed me to Pete’s, and that from the end of Tall Pines Road she’d even called out my name, that Hannah had seen me kneeling by a window, as if at an altar, an act that must have looked odd enough that she stopped in her tracks and just watched what I was doing. And I certainly had no idea that, after I went inside, Hannah had taken up the same kneeling spot as me.
What did she actually see? I can tell you she saw nothing because there was nothing to see, but only you and I know the truth, Pete, even if it’s buried too deep for you to remember. Anything else is a lie.
Anyway, not knowing any of this, I went ahead and finished my spaghetti, licking up the last of the sauce from the tray. After that, I caught a couple of touchdowns for little Billy. I’m not sure what I did for the rest of the night, only that I made it to bed well before my daddy came home, and probably slept well, usually did. I guess that was all about to come to an end.