The Orchard (6 page)

There was only the kitchen glow, and the flower garden bordered by painted brick.

“Mike?”

I ran to the front and stopped at the gate. The street was empty, no cars at the curbs, no sound of traffic on Chancellor Avenue, off to my left.

A shudder that was probably a memory of the wind had me holding onto the fence until it passed, and I told myself it was my imagination and what I ought to do was go for a walk to clear my head. And as I did, hands in my pockets and head down, I wondered if it was all just overreacting. I had been grumpy with Aunt May and Stick when they were only trying to help, I’d bitched at Mike when he was only looking for an ear, and I don’t think Mary really believed I was sincere about her grief. Maybe, I thought, it’s really all me. Maybe I ought to turn around, go home, and get some studying done. It would take my mind off things. It would, as May said, keep me from dwelling too much on the bad stuff, like Rich.

By then I was heading up Centre Street, catching glimpses of this gloomy-looking kid in the shop windows, not paying attention to the people who were walking past me; turning a corner, the clock on the bank striking nine, and going on past the high school, past houses I think I’ve only seen in the dark, thinking about dying.

I was on the Pike when I finally looked to see where I was heading, standing under the blinking amber light that was supposed to slow traffic before it turned onto Mainland Road. The highway was deserted, the few streetlamps giving it a coat of shimmering black.

I crossed over.

I guess I expected some sort of sign there, an accusing arrow pointing to the spot where Mary had held his head and cried, a flashing red bulb to mark where the stupid bastard had ruined my life because he didn’t understand how much more I needed his girl than he did.

There was nothing but gravel that didn’t even look disturbed.

I went home.

I went to bed.

I dreamed that my carved Mary walked through the walls and joined me under the covers.

I woke up when Aunt May shook me; I sat up when I saw how pale her face was, and how sad were her eyes.

The hospital reception room was practically empty when I got there. There was an old lady sitting with a little kid who wouldn’t stop asking for his mommy, and a guy who looked like he’d be more comfortable sitting in the cab of a truck. The nurse on duty told me there were no visitors. I said thanks, asked for the men’s room, and walked around the corner, right into the elevator that took me to the top floor. The station there was deserted, so I went down the hall almost walking on my toes, looking through large windows that showed me mostly old people, lying under clear plastic tents, tubes and wires and monitor screens keeping them out of sight.

And Mike.

In the last room, wrapped like a mummy, both legs in traction, both arms in casts.

“What are you doing here? Visiting hours are over.”

In the movies, the guy says he’s a brother or a cousin. I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him until the nurse took my arm and led me away. She was sorry, she said, but there are rules and did I know him very well. The look on my face shut her up; and when I asked her how he was, the look on her face told me I’d asked a stupid question.

I waited for a while downstairs before going home. I was glad there were clouds because I didn’t need spring sunshine to tell me life goes on no matter how lousy you feel; what I did need was a thunderstorm, a strong wind, a cliff overlooking a turbulent sea. What I got was Uncle Gil and Aunt May, sneaking around like I had the plague, smiling sadly, nodding, and keeping themselves so busy I didn’t have a chance to ask them to talk.

I called Stick, but he couldn’t come to the phone.

I called Mary, but she wasn’t there.

I even called Amy, but her mother said she was locked in her room and wouldn’t come out. Would I mind coming over to see if I could calm her down?

I hung up without saying goodbye.

Then I went out to the shed and stared at dead Mary, and thought about how some people can go all their lives without having all their friends die on them until they’re supposed to, how some people can get through college without having a crisis every ten minutes, about how some people just can’t seem to help latching onto someone else, like having a transfusion and all the problems flow from one person to the other, get solved, and flow back and everything’s all right—and if it isn’t all right, at least it’s bearable until next time.

A finger traced the lines of her wooden hair, the lines that soared up and away from her forehead and down around her ears, just like in real life; it stopped to show the way her cheeks were slightly sunken, the way her chin was almost but not quite pointed, the way a muscle on the left side of her neck stood out even when she was resting.

Rich was dead, and I was glad.

Mike was going to die, and all afternoon I worked at some decent tears, some feeling other than a horrid sense of relief that I wouldn’t have to listen to his constant bitching anymore about a woman only a year out of high school who wouldn’t give him the right time of day.

I thought he was my friend, and I thought I should cry.

I knew something was wrong with me, but I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know then whether or not to be scared.

I slept in my bed, but I dreamed I was in Mary’s, made of cloud and soft rain and warm sunlight and her; I slept so soundly that Aunt May had to wake me, and remind me that in less than two hours I had my first exam.

I don’t think I ever moved so damned fast in my life. I skipped my shower, skipped breakfast, and couldn’t believe it when I ran the whole two miles to Hawksted’s small campus. I was, barely, on time; luckily, English still remained my best subject and the professor my easiest mark—the questions were simple, the conclusions to be drawn obvious, and I was one of the first to turn my work in.

As planned, Stick met me at the student union. We found an empty lounge and dropped onto one of the couches, doing our act about misery and woe and how God Himself would have to grade the papers with divine compassion before we could pass. And when that was done, we matched schedules for the rest of the week. My next test was Wednesday morning, the first of a string of three in a row. Stick had one a day, the fortunes of war.

Then he told me about Mike.

“Jackass wrapped his old man’s car around a telephone pole, can you believe it? He must have been doing ninety, the cops said.” He shook his head, took off his baseball cap, and slapped his knee with it. “I don’t get it, y’know? He just doesn’t do stuff like that, speeding and crap.”

I was cold in that room, and I couldn’t meet his eyes.

“You go see him?”

I nodded. “I tried, anyway. Snuck up when they weren’t looking, but they caught me.”

“Yeah. He looks—”

I glared, and he didn’t say it, and whatever we were going to do that afternoon was instantly replaced by a trip to the hospital, he on his new moped and me riding behind. It was a tight squeeze, and he laughed most of the way because our combined weights held us down to barely a walk.

“Damn good thing you’re dropping some tonnage,” he told me as we walked into the building. “Christ, the way you used to be, you would have squashed it flat.”

I shoved him hard through the revolving doors, sneered at his protest, then composed myself as I approached the receptionist and asked about Mike Buller. She looked at me kind of funny, looked at Stick until he took off his cap, and looked pointedly between us into the waiting room. I half turned and saw a group of people gathered around Mike’s parents—his mother was crying, his father looked ready to tear the place apart.

“Shit,” Stick said, grabbed a tissue from a box on the desk, and blew his nose.

“I’m going,” I told him when he started to walk over.

“What?” He stopped and slapped his cap back on. “But you can’t, Herb! You gotta … you gotta say something, don’t you think?”

I shrugged. I supposed I did, but I didn’t know what, and I wasn’t going to get myself into that mess over there, standing around with my hands in my pockets while I watched the Bullers’ world fall apart.

“C’mon,” Stick said, reaching for my arm.

I stepped away and told him no with a look.

“Sometimes,” he said then, “you are really a shit, Herb, you know?”

I ignored him and left, walked up to the luncheonette and ordered a chocolate shake. It tasted lousy, but I sat at the counter anyway, like I was in a bar and nursing a drink. I stayed for an hour and had a sandwich I didn’t finish, took a walk through the park and watched some kids playing ball, then wandered again until I passed Station Motors and saw myself in the window.

The first thing I thought was, there was someone standing behind me, that damned guy again— but when I looked, I was alone. And when I looked back, I saw this almost skinny guy, this blond-haired guy wearing baggy pants and a baggy shirt, with eyes, because of the dark car in the front of the showroom, that looked like empty holes.

I put a hand to the plate glass as if I could touch myself, backed away to the curb, and looked down at myself. My hands began to tremble. My stomach felt ready to get rid of the shake and sandwich. I must have stood there for nearly five minutes, pulling at my shirt, pulling my waistband away from my gut, acting like I’d never seen myself before.

I knew I hadn’t been eating right for a while; I knew that I’d been swearing to go on a real, honest-to-god diet if that’s what it would take to be human again; and I knew that the last time I’d said that was only Friday afternoon. When we were all at the orchard.

But you can’t lose fifty pounds in three days.

You just can’t.

Another stare at the window, another look at my stomach, and I started to run. I was scared. A million names of real and fake diseases tumbled over each other in their attempts to explain, and a million other reasons sounded just as bad.

You can’t lose fifty pounds in three days.

You just can’t, and expect to live.

When I got home, everyone was gone, there was no note, and I could smell a full turkey dinner cooking and baking in the kitchen. I didn’t go in. I ran upstairs to the bathroom, stripped off my clothes, and stood in front of the full-length mirror on the door.

“God,” I said. “God, Jesus, what …”

Not only wasn’t I fat like I used to be, there wasn’t even any sagging. My skin was normal, no folds where the weight used to be, no wattles on my neck, no creases … no nothing.

“Oh, god. Oh, Jesus.”

I sat on the floor, trying to get a breath and stop the tears that were there suddenly, then grabbing onto my arms, my legs, to keep them from shaking themselves right out of their sockets.

I felt the cold, but I was used to it.

And I heard the buzzing in my ears, the murmuring of a thousand voices so low I couldn’t understand them.

And I looked at myself again and something heaved in my stomach; I crawled over to the toilet, threw up the lid, and leaned over the bowl. But nothing came out because there was nothing inside, and the retching went on so long I started to whimper at the pain, at the burning, at the tiny flecks of black I saw floating in the water.

I don’t think I’ve cried so much since I was a baby.

I could smell turkey and bread dressing and hot rolls and fresh butter.

The light dimmed before I was able to move again, and the first thing I did was put my clothes back on, not caring how I looked, only wondering who I could go to, who I could find who would tell me what was wrong.

The second thing I did was smash the mirror with everything I could pull from the medicine cabinet.

The house was dark.

I could smell pumpkin pie and ice cream and whipped cream and fresh cider.

I stumbled into the living room and stared at the phone.

I couldn’t call Mike, I couldn’t call Rich, I couldn’t call Amy because she would only want to talk about how her life was over.

Mary wasn’t home.

Stick was.

“What do you want,” he said flatly.

“Stick, I’m in trouble, man, real trouble.”

He didn’t say anything, and it didn’t hit me right away that he was still pissed about my leaving the hospital without talking to Mike’s folks.

“Stick, honest to god, I think I’m in big trouble.”

“No shit,” he said, his voice oddly slurred. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, friend, some of us other guys got troubles, too. You just don’t seem to care anymore.”

If he had been in the room, I would have knocked out his teeth. “Stick, you don’t get it, man. I—”

“I ain’t got the time,” he said then. “I just slashed my wrists.”

“Jesus, that isn’t funny, Stick.” There was no response. “Stick? Stick, goddamnit, I said that isn’t—” The receiver dropped on his end and I could hear it swinging back and forth, slamming against something, hollow and loud. “Stick! Jesus, Stick!”

If the front door hadn’t opened right away, I think I would have smashed right through it.

Two blocks, two long and hard blocks, and I jumped the stairs to Reese’s porch and started pounding on the door. No one answered. I yelled, I rang the doorbell, I ran to the windows that looked in on the front room, cursing because the curtains were drawn, finally finding a crack wide enough to look through.

He was there. I could see his feet poking out of the foyer, I could see the receiver swinging from its cord and hitting the wall, and I could see on one knee what looked like blood.

I know what I should have done. I know I should have busted a window and called the police, or gone to a neighbor’s and begged for help. But I ran instead, like I’d killed him myself, staying to the shadows, ducking behind poles and trees and even hedges when a car went by, turning around whenever I saw someone walking toward me.

By the time I ran out of wind and my legs had started to scream, it was twilight.

Soft colors, soft breeze.

And I was in the orchard.

I’m not a coward, you know. I know when to fight and when to back off. But when I looked around and realized where I was, I couldn’t stop myself from wishing my mother was here.