Downers Grove (16 page)

“You're the one who got me into this mess,” I said.

“Me?”

“It was your idea to go to that party. It was your idea to throw the car battery!”

“Listen. Just chill, all right. If they try anything I will personally swat their agenda back in their face, just like last time,
comprende?”
Tracy tried to be reassuring, but her war speech was loosing its intensity. She seemed to think that this was all my fault and she was putting in overtime as it is.

Mom spent the night at Cape Canaveral, so Tracy took the honor of driving me to school and nearly got us both killed twice, making fast left turns in front of traffic. She had a remarkable way of bringing me right back into the danger zone.

I turned up the Bowie tape, sat back, and braced myself for an imminent collision.

We got stopped at the railroad tracks and watched a freight train rumble through town. The cars tilted back and forth with a slow and easy sway.

“Someday I'm gonna jump one of those suckers,” Tracy said, “and ride it until the sun comes up.”

“And then what?”

“I'll jump off.”

“What are you gonna do in Nebraska?”

“Every time I have a fantasy you have to castrate it, why is that?”

“Well I was just pointing out that if you rode a train from here until sunrise you probably wouldn't be any farther than Nebraska.”

“Since when are you the reality doctor?”

Tracy seemed to be in a foul mood, so I didn't push any more buttons. When we pulled into the school parking lot I was struck with panic. Finals were breathing down my neck and the books stacked beside my bed looked like the Sears Tower. Tracy was more concerned with fanzine no. 4 and started reviewing the finished pages of the next issue.

“I know it's a bit incestuous, but I still think we should put you on the cover,” she said. “The locker fire is definitely top story.”

“We should hold publication until the curse happens.”

“You're right, we should wait for the curse. But what if it doesn't happen?”

“Then it's still the top story. I don't want to be on the cover, okay?”

“You know everyone is going to say it's a cover-up.”

My locker was still a heap of rubble so I had to carry what was left of my books around all day in a big canvas bag. Tracy went to her fashion final and I went off to deal with French verbs. I took French as some sort of romantic concept. Listening to all those Françoise Hardy songs, I wanted to run off to Paris and become a poet or a terrorist, but when that plane crash happened with all those schoolkids inside, the whole dream became sort of haunted.

After class I met Tracy in the locker room.

“How did you do on your test?” I asked.

“I wrote an essay on the cross-pollination of Versace and Versailles called ‘The Mirror and the Flashbulb.' It's a rambling swatch of ideas on gaudy behavior, but hopefully there are enough inspired moments of clarity to swing a passing grade.”

We went to gym class and struggled through endless sit-ups and push-ups. I was actually pretty good with jumping jacks. Tracy and I both had a crush on Miss Thompson. I totally admired her style. A lipstick lesbian according to Tracy. Fishnet feminist according to me.

“Only you two could get a C in gym class,” Miss Thompson said.

A
LL
alone, scribbling long purple paragraphs into my journal—
Chrissie Bright, Chrissie Dark
—I felt inspired but was still very hesitant to commit anything to paper. I tried writing in code but ended up tearing out all those pages. I decided to leave a couple blank pages, and fill in the details once the scenery became more acceptable. So part of my journal will be filled with white lies, but better a crown of thorns than an execution, that's what I say.

There's always been plenty of material to draw from, but lately it's been one gush after another. First of all, my mechanic was still missing in action. What started as a desire to jump-start my life has since straddled me into a nonexistent relationship that continues to haunt me, especially at night. I've never been this stupid over a guy—ever. Plus, it's only a few days before graduation, and the curse has not been fulfilled. Maybe it won't happen this year? Maybe the gods are finally satisfied?

Maybe all the other accidents were just a coincidence? It totally creeped me out when Tracy said I should be on the cover of fanzine no. 4. It was such a bad omen.

Lying on my back, watching the alien-green numbers of my digital clock jump forward, I had so much adrenaline pumping through my system that it was impossible to sleep. Tossing and turning into the early morning hours, I finally crawled from my bed and lumbered downstairs, pushed the sliding door open, and headed for the willow tree.

The yard felt spookier on a moonless night—more shadows, more movement in the corner of my eye. I accidentally stepped on a rotten pear and its soft belly squished between my toes. The sweet wet scent reminded me of when Mom used to can fruit. That was back when Dad was still mowing the lawn. He loved the yard and spent most every Saturday afternoon snipping branches, raking leaves, and picking weeds. He even built a compost pile and started a garden. The rabbits ate it all, but Dad didn't really care, “as long as someone appreciated it,” he said. That was the way my parents talked to each other, broadcasting their bitterness far above our heads, constantly struggling for our psychological favor while battling their own. The yard was the first thing to deteriorate, then slowly but surely the house became a reflection of the yard. Mom and Dad were overextended, and in the end they both lost interest in preserving their Camelot. It was a castle of frustration for both of them.

There were a few moments of sunshine and some were even preserved on Super 8 film. Dad thought he was the Godard of DuPage County, so all the footage is a little jumpy, like someone
was playing hot potato with the camera. “Avant-garde,” he called his masterpieces. “You were drunk,” my mother would reply. I never thought of Dad as a drinker, but I guess a lot happened after we went to bed at night. How they got so bitter probably started long before I turned thirteen, but that's about when I began picking up their transmissions, and a couple of years later that's how it ended: one person trying to explain their bad behavior and the other one crucifying them for it. Neither one of them was happy with the life they had, so Dad split and went looking for a new one. Nothing ever exploded, it just sort of dissolved. I guess you could say the feelings were mutual. Mom acted as if she didn't care, but even now you can sense a part of her is missing.

All of the bickering left me with a huge sense of guilt, like it was my fault or something. Maybe if I had been more grateful at Christmas, or did the dishes a little more often, or got better grades, their life would not have disintegrated. Maybe it was up to me to shore up all the foundations and seal the cracks with love. “The cracks were so big you could've fallen right into them,” Mom said. “You'll never know.”

Why would I never know? Wouldn't I grow up to be just like her and experience all the same pain again if she didn't flash me a few cue cards? Seems to me that men are as wild and impossible as life itself.

I ducked under the lilac bushes and entered the umbrella of the willow tree's drooping branches, then started climbing up the fat trunk. Before I reached the top I saw a strange white light underneath the power lines that drooped over the cornfield. It looked like a fuzzy white angel was glowing in the
sprouting field. I just about shit in my pants. Whatever it was, it wasn't moving. I wondered if it fell out of the sky and was hiding. I hurried down the tree.

Maybe angels were scavengers and spend all night stealing corn for banquets in heaven? Everything had a reason, and this seemed entirely reasonable at the moment. I thought about running back to the house and getting a camera, but my curiosity and excitement were too overwhelming. I crossed the street and slowly made my way along the edge of the field, then cut through a wide row of cornstalks, toward the bright white light.

There, in the middle of the field, was my grandmother, standing on a rock, holding a glowing white fluorescent tube above her head. She had a smile on her face as big as Montana, as though she were expecting both me and a large crowd to show up any minute.

“Chrissie, come here, you gotta try it!” Grandma waved me over with her free hand and I hesitantly made my way toward her.

“Where's it plugged in?” I asked.

“It's not,” she said.

“How'd you do that?”

She pointed at the power lines up above.

“I thought you were an angel,” I said, somewhat disappointed, somewhat relieved, shielding my eyes from the weird glow.

“What makes you think I'm not?” She laughed to herself. “Here.” She held the bulb in my direction. “It won't hurt you.”

Fat white moths were dancing around the slender white tube and big black bats were right behind them. I looked up at the transmission towers on either end of the field and the buzzing snake of wire hanging overhead. “I don't think so.”

Grandma looked insulted.

“Where'd you learn that trick?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Made it up, I guess.”

“And what if your trick had killed you?”

“Then I'd be dead, but I'm not, am I?” She looked up at her white sword and smiled at its strange beauty. Grandma was getting weirder by the hour.

“Why are you wandering around in your pajamas again? And what's going on over at that house? I saw police cars on the cul-de-sac. There were so many lights flashing through the yard it looked like a UFO had landed.”

“David had a party and the police came by.”

“Was somebody murdered?”

“One of the neighbors probably complained that David's band was too loud.”

“Wasn't me.” She turned the tube sideways, and the large white fan of light evaporated into solid black. My eyes went fuzzy while adjusting to the sudden darkness. Grandma clasped her arm around mine and led me back through the field.

“So tell me about Mr. Troublemaker. I hear he's a race car driver.”

“You'd like him, Grandma. I saw him race at Santa Fe Speedway.”

“Did he win?

“No, but it was close.”

“Are you falling in love?”

“I'm trying, but it's not easy. Every time I take a step closer, he takes two steps farther back.”

“So take twice as many steps.” Grandma swatted some flying insect away from her forehead.

“I wish it was that easy.”

“Sounds to me like he's riding a roller coaster and you're waiting in line to buy a ticket. There's a big gap between those two comets. Maybe you should concentrate on your own tornado instead of trying to fight the wind in his,” she said.

“Do you think he's like my father?”

Grandma tilted toward her house, leaning as far away from the question as possible. She punched her lips out and resituated her dentures, leading me across the road and up the gravel driveway.

“Do you know where he lives?” I asked.

She looked up at the sky. “I got a postcard from him once.”

“Can I see it?”

She hesitated for a minute, then shook her head. “It's in one of those bottomless drawers.”

“Where was it from?”

“Chicago,” Grandma said. “You ever been there?”

“A couple of times—for concerts and stuff.”

“You should check out the laser show at the planetarium,” she said.

“You went to see the laser show?”

“Pink Floyd is the best.” Grandma smiled. “You like Pink?” she asked.

“I like Pink.”

She gave her denture plate another tumble. “I'll go find that card for you, but don't you ever tell your mother where it came from, promise?”

“Promise.”

W
ITH
a little pleading I convinced Tracy into taking a road trip. I was anxious to see my dad, and Tracy was looking for an excuse to blow off homework.

“I love going to Chicago,” she said. “It makes me feel so dangerous.”

We slipped onto the highway and evaporated into the hundreds of other identical cars. Tracy whipped through traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway, changing lanes with the furious pace of a windshield wiper.

My life was beginning to feel like an emotional Tilt-A-Whirl, up and down, around and around. Somehow I imagined that if I could bring Dad back into the picture everything else would fall into order.

“I don't think spying is cool.” Tracy interrupted my space-out. “You should call your dad, tell him you're in the neighborhood, ask him to meet for coffee. It's the least you can do.”

“Oh yeah right.” I put my right hand up to my ear, as if I were talking on the phone. “Hey, Dad, it's me, Chrissie. Your daughter, remember? Well I just happened to be around the corner, yeah, and I just happened to have found your phone number in my pocket.” I hung up the phone. “It's too obvious. Besides, I only want to see him. I don't want him to see me.”

Tracy drove under the post office building and all of a sudden the expressway ended and we were on a four-lane street surrounded by skyscrapers. The sidewalks were barren except for the occasional misfit pushing a shopping cart. An electric train rumbled overhead. A great cloud of noise hung over the intersection.

Tracy turned left and accelerated up Lake Shore Drive. I cracked my window a bit to get a whiff of lake air. It smelled like vacations. Tracy exited at North Avenue, then headed north toward Wicker Park, to an after-hours club she had discovered surfing the Net one day at school. We parked on a dark treeless side street and walked back around the block.

“You know I should be home studying,” Tracy said.

“Yeah right.”