A Face in Every Window (6 page)

Seeley shrugged, and I could see that he didn't want to talk to his older brother. Larry had always been the misfit of the family, the poet in a family of football stars. Mr. Fresca, one of the sophomore English teachers, used to call him Hamlet because he was always so moody, and the nickname stuck. From there, kids started asking him where his tights were, since Hamlet wore tights, and then the rumor got started that he was gay. Tim Seeley hated his brother for the embarrassment
he caused him at school and the turmoil he caused at home, fighting with his football-coach father all the time. Mr. Seeley called Larry a loser, the black sheep of the family.

When Larry asked him how it was going at home, Tim didn't answer. He jumped off the porch and headed down toward Bobbi Polanski, who stood at the bottom of the sloping lawn, shading her eyes and staring up at the house.

I looked at Larry, who watched his brother and fiddled with the hoop earrings in his ear.

"So, uh, I hear you're not living at your parents' house anymore," I said, preferring to talk to Larry rather than join Bobbi Polanski on the lawn.

He shook his head. "I'm in the doghouse."

I nodded, tried to chuckle, be cool.

He rocked back in his chair and pulled his hair forward and began braiding it. "No, really, I'm in the doghouse," he said. "I'm sleeping back of the McCloskys' place, in their old doghouse."

"Are you serious?"

He finished braiding his hair and tossed it over his shoulder. "Hey, I've slept in plenty worse. It's big enough. They used to have a Saint Bernard. I take a crap in the woods when I need to, wash in the creek—I do okay."

"Yeah, I guess," I said, not knowing what else to say.

He stood up and stretched, looking down at me at the same time. "Don't look so worried," he said. "I'm like a cat; I've got nine lives and I always land on my feet."

"Maybe," I said, wondering what it would be like to be someone like Larry, to have lived his life. "But how many lives have you already used up?"

He turned to me and made a fist, and I wondered for a second if he were going to punch me, but he smiled and just gave me a nudge. "You've got a point," he said, not answering the question. Then he added, "I like you, O'Brien. You're smart, aren't you?"

I shrugged, pleased for some reason that he liked me.

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his cutoffs and leaned against a post "So did Timmy tell you about what happened?"

Now I'd done it. I should have left with Tim when I had the chance. I didn't want to get in the middle of a family feud.

I looked down at the floor, pretending to study the gray-painted floorboards. "Not really," I said. "Just something about your father seeing you with some—uh—pills, I guess."

"Vitamin pills. They were vitamin pills."

"Maybe," I said.

He shook his head and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his T-shirt. "Man, I'll never be able to live there again." He took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it, stuffing the box back in his pocket. He took a few puffs and looked out at my parents. Pap was spinning around and around while Mam stood watching him, talking to him. Some of the other people had drifted out, coming from around the back of the house to where they stood. I looked for Dr. Mike but didn't see him.

"You've got great parents," Larry said, surprising me. That's one thing I never expected to hear from anybody and knew I'd never believe myself, much as I loved them. "They just let you be, don't they? They just kind of live for the moment. It's great."

"Your parents are pretty good" I said, and then added, "Your father's great"

Larry flicked his cigarette ash over the side of the porch and squinted at me. "You good at sports?" he asked.

I shrugged. "I'm okay, I guess, in basketball."

Larry shook his head. "No good, two strikes against you. You're mediocre, strike one, and you like basketball, strike two. Now, if you were really great in basketball, that would put you in neutral territory, but you see with Dad, with my great, wonderful, slap-you-on-the-back, how-ya-doin' father, you'd better be great at some sport, preferably football, because that's all that counts."

"I don't know. He's nice enough to me," I said.

"For a friend of Timmy's. For a neighborhood buddy. It would be a whole different story if you were his son."

"Yeah, maybe."

Larry tossed his cigarette down on the wooden floor and mashed it with his foot. "You say 'maybe' a lot. Aren't you ever sure of anything? Don't you
know
anything?"

I could hear the irritation in his voice.

"I know you're living in a doghouse," I said.

He snickered. "Yeah, I sure am." Then his expression changed. He looked worried, even scared. He looked out toward the cabin again. "They'll never let me change. To them I'll always be Larry the dropout, the dopehead.... They were just looking for me to slip up. I take a few vitamin pills and it's the perfect excuse to kick me out. I'm too much trouble, and I'm not worth the effort. Even I'll admit that."

Larry jumped off the porch. I watched him, long legged and lanky, walking toward Mam and Pap, and I thought
about the way he'd blown it, thrown his family away with the way he acted. I knew if I had his family, his parents, I'd do anything to stay with them. I'd do anything to keep a father like Mr. Seeley.

I looked across the lawn and saw Pap, dizzy from spinning, waver and then fall to the ground.

M
AM AND THE
contest were a one-week wonder, and then all the hoopla ended. Everyone went back to whatever they were doing, and we got down to the business of planning our move. Mam held a yard sale and sold at least half of our furniture.

Pap and I walked every day to the grocery store to pick up any cardboard boxes they were willing to hand us, and together we packed up the house.

Mam enrolled me in the public high school out in New Hope. I had never been to a public school before, only Catholic schools. Mam said it was too late for me to apply for a scholarship at a Catholic school nearby, which is the only way she could send me, so for at least my junior year I'd be attending the public school.

We didn't see Dr. Mike but a few times that August. He came to give Mam a few more driving lessons, but since we were so busy with the move he did most of his visiting over
the phone, always late in the evening, always when I had gone to my room for the night.

Larry, who had never given me or my family the time of day until that summer, came over every day to help us pack and to talk to Mam. It seemed to me that in just a few short months, ever since Grandma Mary's death, she had replaced Pap with Dr. Mike and me with Larry. While Pap and I did the grunt work, sorting and packing the junk in the garage, arguing over what should go and what we should throw out, Mam and Larry sat laughing and talking over their plates of hummus and tabbouleh, figuring out the logistics of the move.

I never told Mam that Larry lived in the McCloskys' doghouse. I didn't want her feeling sorry for him.

I asked Larry once if he ever planned on getting a job to support himself, get himself out of the doghouse, and he said he still had plenty of money. I asked him where he got it and he said he used to sell drugs on the streets. I didn't know whether to believe him or not Why would a drug dealer own a beat-up van? I thought they drove around in Cadillacs or limousines. Why would he live in a doghouse instead of renting a place? But I told Mam about the drugs, thinking she ought to know what kind of a person she was really dealing with.

"Don't let him fool you, Mam," I said to her. "All the Seeleys say he's nothing but trouble. You don't know all the things I know about him, but believe me, he's dangerous. He could get Pap hooked on drugs. Think of what that would be like."

"Now, why would he want to do something like that?" Mam had asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know. Why would he sell drugs? He can't have much of a conscience if he's going around doing something like that."

***

O
NE NIGHT LARRY
came to the door. Mam and
I
answered it at the same time. Larry looked at the two of us, then said, wiping at his nose, that he'd come to talk to Mam in private. Mam shooed me out of the room. I didn't like it, but I headed back to the porch. I heard Pap come inside, and Mam told him to go on to bed and she would be there in a while. Pap left and the voices in the kitchen got low and whispery. I turned on my radio and flipped through a copy of
Sierra
magazine, waiting for Larry to say what he wanted to say and then leave, but after a couple of hours of flipping through magazines and then playing myself in a game of chess, I got tired of waiting and headed back out to the kitchen.

I could see them from the living room. Mam and Larry stood hugging each other, and I came to the entrance to the kitchen and just watched, waiting for them to realize I was there. Larry stood facing me, but he had his head buried in Mam's shoulder, his hair mixing with hers.

Larry lifted his head and saw me first, springing back from Mam as if there were a coil between them. His cheeks were wet and flushed. He turned away from me, holding his head down, not saying anything. He grabbed a napkin off the counter in front of him and blew his nose on it.

Mam turned around to face me, surprised. She grabbed up her hair and flipped it off her shoulders. I noticed a wet patch on her right shoulder.

"JP, is everything all right?" she asked.

I stared at her a good minute, saying nothing, amazed that she had asked me what I should have asked her. Then Larry, with his head still bowed, keeping his face averted, said he ought to get going and fled before Mam could stop him.

Mam looked at the door and I looked at her. She stood with her arms crossed, shaking her head and licking and biting on her lips.

I took a deep breath and let it out. Mam turned toward me.

"What's going on?" I asked. "What did he want?"

"He just wanted to tell me about himself, JP."

"What about him?"

"About his life, what it's been like for him."

"What what's been like for him?" I asked, knowing that through his brother, Tim, I probably knew as much as she did about him.

Mam massaged her shoulder. "I'm sorry, JP. If you want to know more than that, ask him yourself. Now, I'm very tired. I'm going to bed. We've got just one more day before the move, and I've got my driving test in the morning." Mam moved toward me, holding out her arms as if she wanted to hug me. I glanced at the wet spot on her shirt and backed away. I turned and shuffled off to my room. Then Mam called to me and I turned around, standing just inside the room.

"Larry's going to be coming with us," she said. "He's going to be living with us in New Hope. He needs a place to stay."

I looked at Mam standing in the light of the kitchen, and I stood in the light of my porch, but the room between us, the living room, was dark, and the distance across that darkness, immeasurable.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Mam set off with Dr. Mike to take her driving test, and since she planned to drive Dr. Mike's BMW for the test, I asked her at breakfast if she figured on buying a BMW after she passed. We'd never needed a car before, we had the train station and the bus stop at the end of the road, and most of what we really needed was within walking distance.

Mam said that Larry had offered his van in exchange for his living with us. She said this with her back to me, leaning over one of the last boxes left to pack. What little talking we'd done that morning had been like that, our heads turned away from each other, almost as if we were talking through someone else who would then pass our message on to the other person. I knew that this time Mam kept her back to me because she thought I would think a beat-up van in exchange for a place to live was a stupid deal I did, and I told her so while spooning the last bit of my cereal into my mouth. We only had the one bowl and spoon left out, so we ate in shifts.

Mam turned from the box and looked at me, ready, I realized, for a battle.

"That van is all Larry has to offer, and so I'm taking it. He said he'd keep it in working order, so what more do I need?"

"We're moving to a rich people's town, Mam. Rich people like Dr. Mike and Aunt Colleen. What will those people think if they see you driving around town in that thing? And then when they see Pap act up, which he will eventually, and find out Larry the drug dealer's living with us, what are they going to think?...Larry will probably start selling drugs on the streets of New Hope."

Mam's face got red and I could see her chest heaving. She set her palms flat on the kitchen table and leaned toward me. "That was an ugly thing to say. You listen, JP. I've never cared about what other people think, and I'm not about to start now."

"Well, that's obvious," I said, grabbing the cereal bowl and moving toward the sink.

" JP, what's wrong with you? What's going on? We're moving to a beautiful new home with woods that go on for miles. What could be better? You and I can—"

"You mean you,
Larry,
and I," I said, turning on the faucet and letting the water run as if I could drown out the sound of her voice and the clamor of my own thoughts.

"Larry? Is that the problem?"

"No, just part of it" I turned around to face her, letting the water run behind me. "It's this Larry thing—and—and..." I shrugged. I couldn't think of what to say. I just wanted her to tell me, explain everything without my having to figure out what it was I wanted to know.

"I won this house, JP," she said. "A whole big dream house. Now, I don't deserve it any more than anyone else, but I won it. So I want to share it—with you and Pap and Larry, whoever, not grab it and sit on it and keep people away. I want to share my good fortune. I believe in doing that, JP. Larry's giving me an opportunity to do that. He's really giving me another gift."

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the faucet. Mam came up behind me, reached around my waist, and turned off the water. She grabbed my shoulder and turned me around to face her. "Do you think that's corny? Stupid? What? Don't just roll your eyes. Tell me."