Lemonade Mouth (26 page)

WEN:
Tamworth Rules

Olivia was waiting at the bus stop at the corner of County Road and Massasoit just like she promised, her Scooby-Doo backpack over her shoulder. Mo arrived soon after, followed by Charlie and Stella. Each of us was bundled for the cold. Once more I tried to get Olivia to tell us what this was all about but she still wasn’t talking. And once more all she said was, “Do you trust me?”

Everybody looked exasperated. “Of course we do.”

But she still didn’t seem sure. “Wait then. You’ll see.”

It was a weird feeling, not knowing where we were going. And dragging myself out of bed at 7 a.m. wasn’t something I usually did on a weekend. But the invitation was so strange. Olivia had asked us one at a time, pulling me aside one Friday afternoon at the end of January. Her face had been flushed and her voice unnaturally timid, even for her. She wanted me to go with her somewhere but she wouldn’t say where. Except that it was going to take most of the day and that we wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. She also asked if I had a passport or a birth certificate.

“Sure, I got a passport two years ago when we went to Mexico. But what do I need that for? You planning on taking us out of the country?”

“No,” she’d said, her face serious. “But make sure you bring it, okay?”

The whole thing was a mystery. An adventure. How could any of us help being curious? Besides, I had nothing better to do. If I stayed home I’d probably end up helping my dad move more of Sydney’s furniture into the house. Seemed like there was something new every day. She was always rearranging things, dragging strange-looking desks and tables in or out of storage, even finding new stuff at antique stores. Or else I’d end up spending yet another Saturday listening to the two of them make wedding decisions. If I was asked to comment on one more doily pattern my head was going to explode.

Eventually the shuttle to Providence pulled up and we got on. The bus had that certain plastic smell, one I was familiar with from my occasional trips into the city, sometimes to catch a concert at Club Babyhead or maybe just to go to the used record store. The seats were half full. I took the spot next to Olivia, Charlie grabbed the seat across the aisle, and Stella and Mo sat behind us.

Olivia was barely visible inside her giant gray parka and a wool cap that looked like her grandmother might have knitted it for her. She wouldn’t look up. Her foot kept tapping on the floor.

“What’s the matter? You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

But there was definitely something weird going on. She was usually pretty quiet, but I’d never seen her like this.

“Oh, I almost forgot. I brought you something.” I fished around in my pocket until I found the tiny plastic compass I’d pulled out of my desk drawer at home. I reached across and gave it to her. “In case we get lost on the way to wherever we’re going.”

Mo, who was leaning over the back of our seat, laughed. For the first time that morning, Olivia smiled. I couldn’t help studying her face. Something had seemed different about Olivia lately, only I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. It wasn’t just that her hair was looking better now, softer, like she’d started taking care of it. It was something more basic than that. So what was it? I searched for clues in her eyes, but that just confused me even more. Until that moment, I would have said they were brown, but now I saw that they weren’t—at least not completely. On the edges they were lighter, almost yellow. They were amazing.

She pulled me out of my thoughts when she suddenly said, “I’m glad we’re doing this, guys.”

But doing what? At the station in Providence Olivia led us to a booth where we bought tickets for the Greyhound to Boston. An hour and a half later we were on yet another bus, this one heading up toward New Hampshire. But the time flew. We had a lot to talk about. WRIZ was playing us regularly by then, not just “Skinny Nancy,” but “Back Among the Walls” and “Singing a New Song” too. We were call-in favorites. And our first weekend show at Bruno’s had been an even bigger success than the first three midweek ones. The place had been jammed to the legal limit, there were people lined up outside, and almost everyone was in costume—since our first performance was Halloween night, it’d sort of become the thing to do at our shows. At the end of the night Bruno told us he wanted to book us for Saturday nights twice a month at least through the spring. We were still getting over the shock.

As we left Massachusetts Stella finally asked. “Are you going to tell us where we’re headed or what?”

“Soon.” The farther north we traveled, the faster Olivia’s foot tapped. After we passed through Manchester she closed her eyes and started taking long deliberate breaths and exhaling slowly.

“Relax,” I whispered into her ear. “Everything’s going to be all right.” I put my hand on her arm to try to calm her.

But then as we passed the first exit off I-93 into Concord, a change came over her. She gripped the arm of the chair, sat up straight and opened her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready for my confession.”

Charlie shifted in his seat. Mo and Stella’s heads appeared above us again. We waited.

She took a deep breath. “Fifteen years ago there was this boy, a seventeen-year-old high-school dropout, a trouble maker, who met this girl at a party. She was sixteen. A few months later he got her pregnant. At the time, she was living with her mother and the boy was staying with friends because he didn’t get along with his own father. They were both terrified about this news, but they decided he would move in with the girl and her mother, and they’d have the baby.”

I watched Olivia’s face. Her eyes were focused on the back of the seat in front of her, her fingers picking absently at the fabric on the arm of her chair.

“Finally, the baby came. It was a girl. Even with three of them taking care of her, life wasn’t easy. The boy and the girl started fighting. It didn’t help that when the baby was a year old the boy had to serve a three-month jail term for stealing stereo equipment from a department store. It wasn’t his first offense. And then one day soon after he got out, the girl packed her bags, called a cab and never came back.”

Charlie was leaning forward to hear her. “She just . . . left?”

Olivia nodded. “It wasn’t her first time. She had problems even before she met the boy. Fights. Drugs. Her mother said she’d already disappeared four or five times in two years, once for three whole months.” For the first time, Olivia looked around at us. “The girl had issues.”

I nodded.

But she quickly added, “Not that I’m saying the boy was any saint either. He wasn’t. But the thing is, with the girl suddenly gone and him the only parent for the baby—well, it seemed to have an effect on him.”

“Olivia, who are we talking about?” I said finally. “Your parents?”

“Please, just listen okay? This isn’t easy for me. I don’t usually . . . do this.”

From the sound of her voice, I got the feeling that was an understatement.

“Okay, yes,” she said after a moment. “I’m talking about my dad. But it’s important for you to understand that he was a good father to me. Really. I remember. A lot of guys in that situation get scared, they run off and leave the kid for somebody else to deal with. But he didn’t. He bought me dresses, sang to me. He was always reading me stories. He was a big reader, still is. And no dummy either.” Her face got a little softer. “Did you know I’m named after a character from Shakespeare?”

We all shook our heads.

“Twelfth Night,”
she said, with the faintest of smiles. She sat back again. “Anyway, he got a job driving a cab, earned his high school equivalency, and when I was six he even started taking night courses at Rhode Island College. He was going to be an English teacher.”

“So what happened?”

“Well,” she said after a pause, “when I was eight the cab company had cutbacks and they laid him off. And then nobody would hire him because of his prison record. Anyway, my grandmother says he started drinking again. And one night he got so desperate he decided to hold up a store.”

I realized her face had gone pale and she was sweating.

“Listen, Olivia,” Stella said. “If you don’t want to say any more you don’t have to.”

“No, I want to,” she said slowly, still pulling at the threads of her armrest. She closed her eyes. When she spoke next her voice was almost a whisper. “My dad didn’t even own a gun. What he pointed at the old man behind the counter, the storeowner, was a fake, a plastic toy. But it looked real enough. Enough to scare the storeowner, anyway. His name was Gustavo Costa. The thing was, he’d prepared himself for this. He’d been robbed before and he wasn’t going to let it happen again if he could help it. So he reached under the counter and pulled out a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. His wasn’t a fake.”

That’s when the bus turned onto an exit ramp and somewhere at the far edge of my consciousness I heard the driver announce our arrival at the next stop. But I didn’t catch a word of it. All my concentration was on Olivia.

She kept talking. “My dad dropped the toy and put his hands in the air. But then Gustavo moved closer and my dad lost his head. He jumped him and they struggled. The gun went off in the old man’s leg.” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “He died in the hospital later that night. The irony is that the doctors said it wasn’t actually the bullet that killed him, it was a heart attack.”

The doors swung open and other passengers stood up and made their way down the aisle. Some of them gave us curious glances.

“This is our stop,” she said. But without making any move to gather her things she added, “I’m not making any excuses for what my father did. That man, Mr. Costa, he was a real person with a real life of his own. He grew up in Portugal in a little town called Sintra. He didn’t have any family, but he collected pottery. He was sixty-three. I
know
my father did a terrible, awful thing. And he knows it too. But he’s still my dad and I love him. You guys have to understand that he isn’t a monster or anything. I need you to tell me that you believe me about that. And that you’ll give him a chance.”

I felt a strange jumble of emotions. First, a terrible sadness—not only about what had happened but also that she’d carried all this inside her for so long. But at the same time I was grateful she’d told us, that she’d finally let us in. I suddenly wanted to touch her again.

“You will, won’t you?” she asked. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes, Olivia,” I said, taking her hand. “We’re your friends. We trust you.”

The lady behind the desk at the Tamworth State Penitentiary greeted Olivia by name. She asked us to empty our pockets while another guard checked bags and took copies of our paperwork. Everybody seemed to know Olivia. And they appeared to be expecting us, like everything was arranged in advance. Eventually we were led into a large visiting room, and then to a table where a small, neatly combed man sat with his hands folded in front of him. As soon as Olivia was close enough, he stood up and wrapped his arms around her while the guard watched.

“Everybody,” she said, smiling nervously over his shoulder. “This is my dad.” I was surprised. He didn’t look anything like her.

“You must be Stella,” he said, turning around. “And Charlie, and Mo. And
you,
” he said, giving me what seemed like an especially warm grin, “you must be Wendel.” His voice was surprisingly soft and gravelly, and I couldn’t help smiling too. It felt somehow comforting that he and Olivia had that voice in common. I held out my hand to shake his, but he stepped away, glancing at the guard. “Sorry, can’t do that. The rules. No physical contact except with family members, and even then only twice each visit, once at the beginning and again at the end. But it’s a pleasure finally to meet you all.”

We sat down, him on one side of the table, all of us on the other. At first the conversation was polite and stilted. He asked us about ourselves and about school and as we answered his questions I could almost feel the guards’ eyes watching. But that passed. Eventually I forgot about them, and the six of us were gabbing and smiling like we were sitting at somebody’s kitchen table. Soon, of course, the topic turned to Lemonade Mouth. Olivia’s father, whose name was Ted, was interested in hearing all about our recent shows. He wanted to know everything. And every now and then I watched him beam at Olivia. He obviously adored her. And I realized that meeting her father made me look at Olivia differently. She was somebody’s little girl.

At one point, Charlie made some joke about the spare decorations in the room—there were only a couple of official looking documents taped onto otherwise blank walls—and everybody laughed. And that’s when I saw it, the family resemblance. Their faces lit up in exactly the same way. They had the same eyes. And then she smiled at me and I realized something else—that she finally looked happy, maybe the happiest I’d ever seen her.

It was only then that I fully appreciated what this meeting meant to her. To them both. And for that moment at least, I really did suddenly feel like everything was going to be all right.