Twenty-four

“Pete?” Cary said. “Can you talk for a while?”

“I thought you weren’t allowed to phone boys.”

“I’m not at home. I’m baby-sitting. Anyway, this is special—I really have to talk to you.” She started whispering. “It’s about your parents, what you told me.”

“Look, Cary, I shouldn’t have said anything!”

“But you did. And it is the truth, isn’t it? I know it is. You’re not like other boys, I knew that right away, now I know why. But in the park—I got scared. All I could think was, I can’t get mixed up with something like this! I have too many plans and goals! I want to go to college. I want to be someone. I don’t want to know criminals.”

“You want to end this conversation right now?” I said tensely.

“Pete, I’m just trying to tell you what I thought then! I’m ashamed of the way I acted. I know it must have been hard for you to say those things about your parents. You trusted me—it was like you gave me something, a gift, and I threw it away. I’ve had a lot of things happen to me, and I was always proud that I didn’t act like a coward. But Sunday I was afraid, just plain scared.”

“So what are you saying, Cary?”

“I’m sorry, that’s all, I don’t like the way I acted. And I want to go back to the way things were.”

“Me, too,” I said.

In the Nut Shoppe, I gave Cary a smile. The bell rang, two women came in, then a man, then a bunch of kids. The man couldn’t find what he wanted, the kids argued. “Pistachios!” “I hate those little green things.” “Frosted walnuts.” “Pistachios!” “Sugared almonds.” “Pistachios!”

Finally they all left. Cary and I held hands for a moment across the counter. “Pete,” she said, “I’ve just been thinking so much about what you told me.”

“We don’t have to talk about it, Cary.” I glanced out the window.

“No, it’s not that. I have things I don’t tell anyone either. My secrets. Remember the first day, when we went biking? And I told you how my mother was this sick but beautiful person who left me all these beautiful memories?”

“I remember.”

“I lied to you. My mother was sick all right, but it wasn’t anything like TB or cancer.” Her voice was so low I had to lean toward her. “She was a dopehead. Heroin and other stuff too. They took me away from her. They took my sisters away from her. That part was true, and that they put us in different places. And about all my foster parents.”

“Cary, you don’t have to tell me.”

“I want to. This is my truth, Pete. I don’t even know when my mother died. I can’t remember anyone telling me. Just—one day in second grade, I was sitting at my desk and all of a sudden I knew she was dead. I wanted to cry and I couldn’t. I used to pretend she was away getting herself all fixed up and healthy so she could come back for me and my sisters. I don’t remember her at all, and I don’t want to remember my father.”

“Was he that awful?”

“Is. He’s still alive.”

“I thought you told me your foster parents were going to adopt you for your birthday.”

“No problem. My father gave anybody permission to adopt me a long time ago. Only nobody’s ever wanted to.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He’s an alcoholic, and don’t tell me it’s a sickness. He’s a bum. Don’t I have a nice family, Pete? Don’t I have a wonderful heritage? My father never even came to see me until I was twelve. Then he came to my foster parents’ house. He was drunk, dirty … he smelled. He wanted money. That’s the only reason he came to see me. Pete, I hit him. And another time when I was visiting my sister Amy, he came by. He said he wanted to see Amy’s baby.”

“Maybe he did.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re hard on him.”

“Wouldn’t you be? … I’m so ashamed of them … so ashamed …” She started crying.

I didn’t know what to do. “Cary, don’t … it’s not that bad.” I stroked her arm.

“What’s going on here?” Neither of us had heard the door open. A short stout man stood over us.

“Mr. Blutter!”

“Get your stuff together, Cary, you’re fired.” He pointed at me with a fat hand. “You. Out.”

“Sir, can I just say—”

“No. Whatever you two kids were doing, I don’t want to hear about it. You go do it in the backseat of a car, not in my store.”

My face burned. I couldn’t speak. Just when I needed it, my famous maniac impersonation failed me. I waited outside for Cary, kicking myself around for being a coward. When she came out, she looked pretty grim. “I feel terrible that you lost your job, Cary. For whatever it’s worth, I blame myself.”

“Forget it, Pete.”

“Come on, Cary, you want to hit me? I mean it. At least yell at me.”

She almost smiled. “Look on the bright side. Mr. Blutter just did me a favor. Now I have no excuse not to look for another job. I’ll find something, I always do. I’ve been working since I was eleven years old. Something always turns up.”

“I thought you hated job hunting.”

“I do, but so what? Don’t you ever do things you hate?”

“Sometimes.”

She got that grim look on her face again. “I’ve done plenty of things I hate.” She fell silent.

“You told me Blutter was a beast.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Dead on the mark.” I stepped over a torn boot lying on the sidewalk.

Cary shuddered. “Every time I see a shoe or a boot lying on the road like that, I think of my father. I saw him once downtown, barefoot, lying in the street on his back, like a dog.”

We walked close to each other. “Alcoholism is a disease,” I said. “They really have proved that. Anyway, I don’t think people are all one way or another. All good or all bad.”

“What about Mr. Blutter?”

“Exception to the rule. Your parents had you, you know, so they must have been good underneath.”

“Pete, if I turn out to be anyone, it’s not going to be any credit to them.”

“What do you mean, if—you’re someone already.”

“Am I?” She looked up at me. “Who? Who’s that person called Cary Longstreet? Do you know?”

“I think so,” I said uncertainly.

“Yes … sometimes I think so too. Those are the best times. But other times it seems to me that my whole life is unreal, that I’m just acting, pretending to be someone real, pretending to be that person people call Cary Longstreet. The worst times are when I know I’m not what they think. Then it’s like I’m in a play and there are lines I have to learn if I want to stay there—and I do, I do!—but I’m scared so much that I won’t learn those lines in time.”