I waited for Lindy to say something more, but instead she turned up the music on the radio. The song she’d settled on was heavy and growling, and I was humiliated not to know it. If only I could tag the opening bars. If only I could sing along. That would be something. I expected Lindy to turn it back down so we could talk, but she didn’t.
“Still what?” I said, and thought I heard her voice. “Did you say something?”
On the radio, the song went into its chorus. It was all sloppy chords and high screaming, and Lindy spoke to me over the blare. “Yeah,” she said. “I said you’re not supposed to be all concerned about my mom. You’re supposed to be upset because it means we might be moving.”
I froze at the words.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“No,” Lindy said. “It’s all an elaborate joke made up just for you. We spent months on it.”
She was being sarcastic and making fun of me, but I still thought quickly about grabbing that moment to spill my whole heart, about apologizing for all I had done to her, about letting her secret out and denying her at the party, and maybe even about loving her since I was eleven years old. Then I recalled what my uncle Barry had said to me about just listening to her whenever I got the chance to, just being there for her, so I did.
I stood tall and mute. I waited for her life to open up to me.
“Look,” Lindy said, “I was supposed to call and tell you that, and I did, okay? I’ll talk to you later.”
And that was it. She hung up.
I walked to my window, the phone still at my ear, and stood there. Lindy’s house had green shutters. Someone had hung a rug over the rail of the front porch. The blinds were all drawn. I leaned my head against the glass.
“Lindy,” I said. “What song was that you were listening to?”
The line went dead.
I spent the next hour in my room devastated.
I’d no idea how to conjure a Piney Creek Road without Lindy and therefore worked so hard at discrediting the notion of her moving that I became positive I’d misheard her, or that maybe everything would be okay between Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, and I promptly began to imagine ways I could make this happen. I could send flowers to the house for Mrs. Peggy. I could type love letters and sign them Your Husband. I could sneak into their home and steal the booze from their cabinets. Or, maybe I could just burn the Kerns’ house to the ground, make them leave the area to clear up Mr. Simpson’s mind. What was that thing that Superman did, where he spun the Earth backward to go back in time? Or what if Lindy could just stay with us if her parents moved away? This was not such a crazy idea. She would be a senior this year. No need to uproot her now. There are sometimes complicated issues with credits transferring, with nitpicky technical stuff. What a shame that would be if she had to repeat a year due to a preventable technicality. I hate to even think of it, the poor girl. Of course, we’d be happy to take her in. Yes, yes, I decided. It’s all settled, then.
This thought excited me to such a degree that I began to imagine Lindy walking into my room on accident, wearing an oversized T-shirt and panties, having just woken up on some aimless weekend morning. I stood in front of my bedroom mirror and assumed several poses that I imagined she might like to surprise me in. I took off my shirt and flexed my pale stomach, trying to look sexy. I hooked my thumb into the top of my shorts and pulled down the waistband. Oh, Lindy, I said. I didn’t see you standing there. Sure, come on in. It’s no problem. Just close the door behind you. Yes, of course.
You can lock it.
When I finally emerged from my room I was ecstatic with fantasy. I saw my mom and Rachel folding clothes in the den and thought my mother also looked happier than I had seen her since before Hannah’s death, humming a bit to herself as Rachel spoke. I wondered if she was starting to feel better, or if maybe my uncle Barry’s departure had finally allowed her to relax, and I tried to sneak past the two of them, still flush from my phone call.
“What are you grinning about?” Rachel asked me.
My mother looked up at me and smiled.
“Did you have a nice chat with Lindy?” she asked. “I’m so glad to know you kids are talking again. She is such a sweet girl. She’s had such a hard time.”
For one second I considered answering my mom honestly, telling her first about the fight on the lawn, and then about what Lindy had said about her parents’ troubles and possible split. I realized, though, that this news would do nothing but sadden my mother, not only because her good friend was perhaps losing her husband, but also because this meant that the reason Lindy had called was not to make peace with me, not to be close to me again.
This was important.
If Lindy and I were friends, if we were close, if it looked like our relationship was anything more than a one-way street, my mother would not have to worry about what she had seen in my lockbox. It all made sense to me then. Even though we never spoke explicitly about the rape anymore, and even though she never directly accused me of it, the hopeful look I had seen in my mother’s eyes when Lindy called had proved only one thing: she still hadn’t made up her mind about me.
My name had yet to be cleared.
It then broke over me how hard that span of silence between Lindy and I must have been for my mother, and it made me ashamed. Even when I think of this now, it depresses me. How many hours had she worried about things she didn’t need to? How much pain had I caused her when she still had my father to deal with? When she still had Hannah to mourn? When she still had so much life left to live without either of them?
I couldn’t bear to think of it.
I still can’t.
So, “Yeah,” I told her. “We had a good chat.”
“Good,” my mom said, and winked.
Behind her, Rachel lifted up a pair of my ratty jeans. “Why do you dress like such a thug?” she asked me. “Are you trying to look like a skater or something? Do you even own a skateboard?”
“I don’t know, Rachel,” I said. “Are you trying to look like a lumberjack?”
This comment didn’t come out of nowhere.
Rachel had changed since Hannah’s death, in more complicated ways than I understood at the time. Her increasing preoccupation with Jesus and prayer made sense to me, but not the way this had aged her from a decent-looking coed into a frumpy thing that wore sweatpants and flannel shirts. I suppose that Rachel felt as if caring about her physical appearance suggested she was not thinking about the right things in the wake of our tragedy, not asking the right questions, not facing the truth.
She may have been right. She has always been a good person.
“He’s not a skater,” my mom said. “He’s a rocker. A guitar-playing rocker. Isn’t that right, honey?” My mother was being kind, but I was immediately annoyed. Parents have that special skill of making the truth, no matter how benign, an embarrassing thing. We all know this.
“That’s not what I am,” I said.
“Well, what are you, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I know what he is,” Rachel said, and then mumbled under her breath, “He’s a sinner.”
“Rachel!” my mom said.
“What?” Rachel said. “We’re all sinners, Mom. We all could do better.”
And with that, my mother deflated right in front of us. She looked immediately sad and exhausted, and although we all knew Rachel hadn’t meant to upset her, it didn’t matter. In those days, my mom was always one memory away from being devastated, one conversational turn from a brutal remorse. I believe she might still be this way. I believe everyone might.
Rachel said, “Okay, Mom. I’m sorry,” and continued folding my jeans.
I then walked past them both and into the kitchen, where I felt genuinely starving for some reason, all full of energy and strange hope. I dug around in the pantry, searching for anything to eat, and had designs on becoming a healthier person in life, working out at the gym, and maybe even looking buff the next time Lindy saw me. I could spend the rest of the summer training, I figured. I could convince Lindy to start running again like she used to, this time with me, where we would stop to rest on the track at our school. Where I could pull off my shirt because of the heat and be proud when Lindy stole glances at me, or when she leaned into me jokingly, at first, and then placed her hand on my chest, on my stomach, on my thighs.
Why not? I had just heard her voice on the phone.
She had dialed my number. She had thought of me.
She had said, “I’ll talk to you later.”
Anything was possible.
So, I made a double-decker sandwich and sliced up a cucumber. I walked back to my room with the plate stacked high and a bag of chips between my teeth. As I passed through the den, my mother was quietly organizing the laundry she had folded, her face resigned and grief-stricken. Rachel was quiet.
When I got to my room, I heard my mother say: “I don’t care how you kids dress, Rachel. To me, you’ll always be angels.”