A Face in Every Window (20 page)

I wondered what he meant by "complicated," but I didn't have any time left to discuss it with him. I had to get to school.

It was the first time in my life I had ever dreaded going to school. For one thing, I'd had all of two hours' sleep, and for another I hadn't done my homework. I expected a lot of yelling and a lot of zeros for the day, but all the teachers were understanding. I could do the homework that night and turn it in a day late.

Instead, I skipped my hour helping at the computer lab and did it in the library, handing the assignments in by the end of the day. Then, feeling pleased with myself and my good day's work, I decided to stop by the chorus room and pick up Bobbi and walk with her to the veterinarian's office, maybe talk to her about things.

When I got to the chorus room, though, I found Don
standing just outside the door, peering in through the small square of glass.

"Hi, Don," I said.

He twisted his neck and glared at me. "What's she doing in there?"

I peeked through the window. Bobbi stood on a platform with Andrew Weinfeld. The two of them were singing to each other, holding hands.

I looked at Don. "It's just a duet. They're acting."

He shoved me aside. "Yeah, well, I don't like it"

"Believe me, Bobbi doesn't like Weinfeld. The guy's a nerd."

"Yeah? Then what's she doing with her head next to his, huh?"

"They're acting, I told you."

"Well, she's done acting."

The singing stopped and I heard the teacher announce something, and then the door opened. Don could hardly wait for Bobbi to get out. He pushed at the kids filing out of the room, grabbed Bobbi by the arm, and pulled her out into the hallway.

"Hey! That hurts. What's wrong?" Bobbi said. Then, seeing me, she added, "Hi, JP."

I walked behind them, not sure what I should do. Don held on to Bobbi's arm and hurried her out of the building. I scooted along behind them. He pulled her out to the parking lot, yanking on her arm if she dragged too far behind. Bobbi kept asking, "What's wrong? What did I do?"

Don wouldn't answer. He just kept marching her toward his pickup.

Thinking I could slow things down a little, I said, "Hey, Don, could I get a ride home?" I bobbed about in front of the two of them, and Don shoved me out of the way without answering.

"Get in," he said when we'd reached the truck. Bobbi looked at me, then opened the door.

"Bobbi—" I stepped forward and held the door while Bobbi climbed into the front seat "Wait, I—I need some help at the office—uh, they told me to see if I could get someone to help me today, and I thought maybe you—"

"Look, JP, stay out of it, okay? I know what you're trying to do, but just butt out. I can take care of myself."

Don shouted from the other side of the truck, "Shut the door!"

Bobbi reached out for the handle and pulled the door shut.

Then Don jumped in and peeled out of the parking lot, and I saw Bobbi looking back at me a second before her body jerked toward Don's. He had yanked her hair.

I wanted to run after the truck, do something. If Bobbi could take care of herself, why didn't she?

***

W
HEN I GOT
home later that day, I found Pap had climbed back out on the roof, Aunt Colleen was flirting with the leprechaun, and the workers were loading up their truck. I could find no one else around. I called up to Pap to ask how long he'd been sitting on the roof.

"I just got out here, 'cause I went to work and I have a new plant, see?"

Pap stood up and held up a spider plant. "Soon I can make me a wildflower garden with Bobbi. They said so at the Center, that I could do it soon 'cause the ground is getting unfrozen."

"That's good, Pap. What are you doing up there?"

"I'm just talking, JP, so don't you be telling me what to do. I have things to say now, so you go away."

I waved. "All right, Pap." I left him and decided to walk down to the cabin. I wanted to relive the memories of the night before. I wanted to recall Jerusha's eating dinner with me, and her music, and Harold's poem, and all of us, including me, squeezed in under the blankets, getting in a few jokes before we all fell silent and drifted into our separate thoughts. I had loved being a part of it all. I loved that they had come down to me—maybe not to be with me, but I was the reason they were at the cabin and not in the house. And it didn't seem weird and uncomfortable and Bohemian at all. It felt easy and relaxed. I felt glad the others had come down after all.

I stepped inside and started up the heater. I had decided to do my homework in there among the blankets and pillows and bask in the warm feelings from the night before.

After a while Aunt Colleen came down and checked on me before leaving, and I watched from my window when she pulled out in her car behind the leprechaun's truck. I wondered if they were going to get dinner together somewhere. I told myself not to get bothered by it.
Ignore it. It's none of my business. Butt out,
as Bobbi would say.

Then, just after thinking about her, I heard Bobbi yelling, "I already told you, okay? I told you."

Then I heard Pap shout, "Yeah, she told you already."

I looked back out the window and saw Bobbi and Pap standing up on the roof. Don stood leaning halfway out the window. I hadn't even heard them come home.

He shouted at her and Bobbi shouted back and Pap echoed Bobbi. Back and forth they went. I shrugged and told myself to butt out. I sat back down to do my homework, but I couldn't concentrate.

"She's a big girl. She can handle it herself," I said, but I kept listening. Then I heard Bobbi squeal, "Stop it! Stop!"

I jumped up and Pap shouted, "You're bad. You're a bad man! Stop that now, 'cause you're hurting her," while Bobbi kept shouting, "Stop it!"

I saw Don out on the roof wrestling with the two of them, and all three were knocking into the Nativity set. I dropped my notebook and flew out of the cabin, shouting at them to watch out, but I was too late. Pap's feet had gotten tangled up in the electrical cord. I saw him look down and try to get out of the way of it. I called out to him and he looked up, twisting his body slightly, and over he went with the whole Nativity set falling down on top of him.

P
AP'S BODY LAY
sprawled out on the grass, the Nativity set in a tangle of wires all around him. I felt a flash of relief that he'd fallen off the side instead of over the front onto the driveway, but then I saw how still he was lying, how lifeless he looked, and I panicked. I ran to Pap, shouting up at Don, "I swear if he's hurt, I'll kill you! I swear I will."

I fell on my knees, knocking the Wise Men out of the way, and called to Pap. "Pap! Pap, are you okay?" He had his left leg bent from the knee, up under him.

Bobbi cried, "You killed him! Look what you did, you killed him!"

I kept calling to Pap, placing my ear to his chest and listening for a heartbeat.

Again Bobbi yelled, "You killed him!" and I shouted for her to shut up and call an ambulance. "Do it now, Bobbi!"

A minute later Don ran out of the house and hustled toward his truck Pap had opened his eyes, but when I saw Don trying to escape I shouted, "I will hunt you down, you bastard! I swear I will. You're dead!" The man tore out of the driveway and sped off down the road.

I returned to Pap. "Pap, are you okay? Say something."

"Kerplooie!" he said, lifting his head and shaking it "I fell off the roof!" He tried to rise up onto his elbows, but I held him back. "James Patrick, you're getting tears all over me face, you know, and I've got to move, 'cause me leg is in very great pain." He tried again to move and bellowed, "Owww! Who-ee, this hurts! James Patrick, get off of me with your tears."

***

B
OBBI AND I
rode with Pap to the hospital. While we waited in the waiting room, I lectured Bobbi.

"What is wrong with you, anyway? How could you take up with someone just like your father? Don's exactly like him! You're just asking for it. You said you could handle it—well, why didn't you? Why didn't you fight back? 'Stop it! Stop it!'" I whined, imitating her, flapping my arms. "Why didn't you haul off and flip him, or kick him? You could have at least done that, instead of acting like a limp noodle. You sure had no trouble flipping me to the ground last spring, remember?"

"Yeah, but I didn't
love
you!" Bobbi said, jabbing at my chest with her finger, her face red with fury.

I felt stung by her words, but I ignored my hurt feelings and shot back, "Love? Love? You call that love? Are you crazy?"

"What would you know, O'Brien?" She squinted her eyes. "You've never loved anyone in your life, and no one loves you. You're like a piece of deadwood. Don has passion and
fire, but you wouldn't know about that, would you? You think you've got all the answers because you're so smart, you read all those books—but you don't know anything about real life."

"Oh, and real life's letting someone beat on you? You can have it!"

I could see out of the corner of my eye people watching us. I turned away from Bobbi and waited for Pap by myself near the nurses' station, mulling over her words. She didn't love me. Well, I supposed I'd known that all along—but to hate me? I could see the hate in her eyes. Did everyone hate me? She said I had never loved anyone and no one loved me. Just a couple of months ago she had said I'd always had my parents' love, that I had been surrounded by love but couldn't love back. I thought her earlier judgment was more accurate, but I knew, too, that she had never loved anyone, either, not with real love.

Then I saw Pap hobble down the hall toward me on crutches with a cast running all the way up his thigh. He was jabbering away with the nurse, explaining to her that he had broken his leg in two places, and watching him, I thought, I
do, too, love someone.
I loved Pap. Until that moment I had never realized how much, but I did. I loved Pap with all my heart.

It was late when Larry and the others picked us up at the hospital and brought us home, and as soon as we all walked in the door, Bobbi got on the phone and called around looking for Don. She finally found him at a friend's house and asked him to come pick her up. Pap and I were working our
way up the stairs to Pap's bedroom when Bobbi came down with her grocery bag filled with her belongings. She made sure I saw the bag, and I shrugged and said, "It's none of my business what you do."

Bobbi stopped on the steps and said, "It's about time you figured that out." She switched her bag to her other hip.

"But how you could go off with that maniac instead of staying here, where it's safe, is beyond me."

"Everything's beyond you." Bobbi marched down to the bottom of the steps and Pap, who sat on his bottom inching his way up the stairs backward, said, "Are you leaving us, then, Bobbi?"

Bobbi stopped and turned back around. "I love him, Pap," she said in the meek tone she used with Don.

"Well, congratulations," I said, shaking my head and nudging Pap to continue up the steps by poking him with one of his crutches. "You've turned out just like your mother."

I heard the door slam shut behind me.

"There goes Bobbi," Pap said.

Larry shot out into the hallway. "Was that Bobbi leaving?" he asked.

"Yup," Pap said.

He hurried outside and joined Bobbi on the porch. I could hear the two of them arguing, and I said under my breath, "Good luck."

I'd gotten Pap settled in his bed with everything he wanted, including his Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed toy, when I heard Larry come back inside the house. "I can't believe it!" I heard him shout.

"Believe it," I said under my breath, and Pap said, "What?"

"Nothing, Pap, just lie back and take it easy and tomorrow I'll make you one of Grandma Mary's special meals with a chocolate cake, and you can lick the bowl, okay?"

"Yeah, okay, but I make the soda bread with raisins," he said, smoothing back his wild mass of hair and exposing a pale and tired face.

I patted his arm. "You'll be okay, Pap," I said, searching for some kind of comforting words to say, more for myself than him.

Pap nodded and slid down in his bed, wrapping an arm around his Winnie-the-Pooh. "Yup, I know it. And you know what? The nurse said I'm very handsome, like a model."

"'Night, Pap," I said.

***

A
FTER SCHOOL THE
next day I stopped by the bank and took out some money and bought groceries for the dinner I'd promised Pap. When I got home I discovered the workers had already left and, stepping inside, I found the place all cleaned up, smelling everywhere of fresh paint and furniture polish.

I could hear Aunt Colleen explaining something about the piano to someone in the parlor. I set my groceries down in the kitchen and went to find her. She sat on the piano bench and beside her in another chair, with his broken leg resting on the bench, sat Pap.

They both looked up when I came in.

"Hiya, James Patrick, and I'm getting a real piano lesson so I don't make that awful noise, 'cause Colleen says."

Aunt Colleen stood up. She had on a lace shirt and green skirt—no overalls. She seemed tired, maybe sad even, but I felt pleased to see the old Aunt Colleen back.

"Well, James Patrick, what do you think of the place? It's all done. Do you think your mother will be surprised?"

"Sure, it's great." I looked around the room at all that she had had done and all that she had paid for, the fresh paint, the shored-up floor, a couple of new pieces of furniture—chairs with a floral print. I nodded. "Yeah, it looks like something out of a decorator magazine. How did you get the place cleaned up so fast?"

"Easy, I hired a clean team to come out this morning."

"Well, yeah, it all looks great, thanks. Everyone's going to love it So"—I twisted toward the kitchen and then back—"I've got some groceries to put up and a dinner to prepare."

I eyed Pap, and he struggled to get up. I rushed over to help him, and Aunt Colleen and I got him up on his feet.

Aunt Colleen wiped her hands together and said, "Well, then, I'd better get going. I'll still stop by each day and keep Pap company until your mother comes home. I thought we wouldn't try going back to the Center just yet"