Two Rivers (4 page)

T
he neighborhood in Two Rivers where Betsy and I grew up was made up of row after row of crooked Victorians—crumbling monstrosities sinking in upon themselves. Each house on Charles Street had its own peculiar tendencies. The one next-door to ours had a widow’s walk whose railing had, unprovoked by either natural or unnatural disaster, collapsed into a pile of pick-up sticks on the lawn below one afternoon. The family who lived at the end of the street had the misfortune of owning a house that wouldn’t stay painted. No matter what pastel color they chose each summer, by the following spring it would have shrugged off the pink or yellow or lavender, the paint peeling and curling like old skin. My own family’s house was tilted at a noticeable angle; if you put a ball on the kitchen floor and let go, it would roll straight into the dining room (through the legs of the heavy wooden table), past my mother’s study, and finally into the living room where the pile of my father’s failed inventions inevitably stopped the ball’s trajectory. Most of the homeowners in our neighborhood had at some point given up, resigning themselves to sinking foundations and roofs. To the inevitable decay. There simply wasn’t the time or the money or the love required to keep the places up. This was a street of sad houses. Except for the Parkers’ place.

Though it was one of the oldest homes in the neighborhood, the Parkers’ house was meticulously maintained. Its paint was fresh: white with green shutters and trim. Its chimney was straight. The cupola sat like an elaborate cake decoration on top of the house. A clean white fence enclosed the front yard, which looked exactly as the town barber’s yard should. Rosebushes bordered the uncracked walkway, and other flowers littered the periphery of the yard in meditated disarray. A swing hung still and straight on the front porch, and the porch light came on without fail or flicker each night at dusk. On a street of forlorn houses, the Parkers’ made the other houses look like neglected children.

Of course, I knew Betsy Parker long before I loved her. We had lived on the same street since we were born. Our fathers nodded at each other as they went off to work each morning. Our mothers made polite small talk when they saw each other at the market. Betsy and I had knocked heads once during a game of street hockey, the result of which were two identical blue goose eggs on our respective foreheads. In the sixth grade, we had been the last two standing in a spelling bee (though I’d ultimately won with the word
lucid
). But in the summer of 1958, when we were twelve, our relationship changed from one necessitated by mere proximity into a full-blown crush—on my part anyway; she didn’t love me then. In fact, she didn’t love me for a long, long time. But that summer the seed was planted, and my unrequited passion, like all the other untamed weeds in our yard, grew to epic and tangled proportions by summer’s end.

When school let out in June, I’d taken up fishing, drawn by a local legend that, on a good day, the spot where the two rivers meet was teaming with rainbow trout. But by July I’d spent entire days with my line in the water, and I still had yet to catch a single trout (or any other kind of fish for that matter). The day I found myself smitten by Betsy, I’d also spent fishing, and, once again, I hadn’t caught anything but a cold. I’d meant to go home. I thought I might take a snooze in the hammock in our backyard. But instead of walking down the shady side of Depot Street to the tracks and then heading up the hill toward home, I crossed the street, into the sun. Once there, I stood in front of her, rendered mute.

Orange Crush and skinned knees. This was Betsy at twelve. I’d walked past Betsy Parker a thousand times before. A thousand bottles of Orange Crush. A thousand Band-aids. But that day, as I strolled past her daddy’s barbershop, there she was, with fresh scabs on both golden knees, and it felt like I was seeing her for the very first time. I’m not sure which made me dizzier–the twirling red, white and blue barber pole or Betsy. Can I remember the way I saw her then? You’d think it would be hard after all these years, but it isn’t. Perhaps I was memorizing her before I even knew I should. Here’s the way she looked to me in June when we were twelve: her fingers were long, her legs longer, stretched out on the steps of her daddy’s shop where she sipped her soda through a straw. Her tongue was stained orange, and her hair was like syrup running down her back. (I remember touching my tongue to my lips when I saw her.)

Betsy sipped long and thoughtfully. Then she leaned toward me and looked into my empty bucket. “Whadja catch?”

I felt heat rising to my ears. “Not much today.”

“Yesterday?”

“Not much yesterday either.”

“Why do you bother?” she asked. “If you don’t ever catch anything?”

I shrugged.

“You’re probably the kind who sees the glass half full.” She sighed and sipped the last of her soda pop loudly. “Not me, I’m a half-empty kind of girl.”

I didn’t know what she meant, only that she thought we were somehow fundamentally different, and this made my heart ache.

“You live on my street,” I said stupidly.

“You live on
my
street.” She smiled, setting the amber-colored bottle on the pavement between us. She stuck one bare foot out in front of her and spun the bottle with her toe. It clanked and spun and stopped, its neck pointing right at me.

I didn’t know what to say, so I bent over and picked the bottle up. The glass was still cold. I dropped it into my empty bucket, as if that could make up somehow for my failure as a fisherman. “That’s worth two cents.”

“Coulda been worth a lot more than that,” she said, smiling.

I walked home that day with Betsy Parker’s Orange Crush bottle clanging against the inside of my bucket. From my bedroom window I could see the pristine facade of the Parkers’ house, their immaculate lawn. I felt like an idiot. First, because I’d missed what I quickly realized was a chance at kissing Betsy. And second, because twelve whole years had already passed before I realized that she’d been there all along. Right across the street. I took the bottle out and held it to my lips. The glass was sticky, sweet. I tipped the empty bottle, leaning my head back, waiting for the last sweet drops to fall into my throat.

After that day, I gave up my fishing trips in favor of a
new
futile endeavor, one that would last longer than most boys my age would have had patience for. But Betsy was right, I was a “half-full” kind of person, and I had high hopes. I knew I’d get a second chance; it was just a matter of time.

I
only stood in front of the Parkers’ house long enough to know I shouldn’t be there. The house had recently been painted, and the lawn was trimmed, the hedges clipped. There was a new family living here. A child was peering out at me through the bay window. Soon, the child’s mother opened the curtains and, seeing me, quickly drew the curtains shut. I got back on the bike and pedaled quickly home.

By the time I’d climbed the stairs to my apartment, I wondered if I’d only dreamed the girl at the river, a hallucination brought on by too many nights without sleep. I changed out of my wet clothes, made a pot of coffee, and called the freight office to say I’d been at the wreck all morning—that I’d come by the office in a few hours. Only Lenny Herman, the station agent, was there. Everyone else was still down by the river. When almost an hour had passed and she still hadn’t appeared, I was fairly certain that I’d only imagined her. I started to gather my things to head back to work, when there was a weak knock on my door.

She stood in the kitchen holding her wet shoes in one hand and the dripping suitcase in the other. I motioned for her to sit down at the kitchen table, but she shook her head.

“Oh, I’m sorry, would you like to dry off?” I asked. “There are some clean towels in the bathroom. I can get some dry clothes.”

She nodded and set her wet shoes down by the door. I figured I could find something of Shelly’s that would fit her. She followed behind me slowly down the short hallway, stopping to look at the pictures hanging on the wall. Shelly’s class pictures. Our wedding photo. She touched the top of the frame, gently straightening it. I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt from Shelly’s drawer and handed them to her. She took them and disappeared into the bathroom.

I quickly assessed the state of my house, untidy still from the morning’s chaos. There were dirty dishes on the table (cereal bowls with colored milk, glasses rimmed with orange pulp). Shelly’s shoes were scattered all over the floor, which needed to be swept. I’d splattered chocolate batter on the backsplash when I made Shelly’s cupcakes, but I hadn’t noticed until now. I grabbed a dishrag and wiped at the mess in a useless attempt to make the kitchen less of a disaster. I was wringing it out in the sink when she came out of the bathroom.

“You’re out of toilet tissue,” she said.

“I am?” I asked, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. Let me see if I can find some.” Though I knew there was no toilet paper, that the last time Shelly went to the bathroom I’d given her a paper coffee filter to use, I went to the bathroom, searched through the linen closet, under the sink. Nothing. “I’m out,” I said, returning to the kitchen. “I can get you something, if you still need…”

“Nah. I’m okay. But I’m in the bathroom every ten minutes or so, so I might need something soon.” She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking from my cup of coffee.

“I’ll just run down the street,” I said, checking my pocket for change. “I won’t be more than a minute.”

She sipped on the coffee and closed her eyes.

I charged down the stairs, two at a time, not considering, until I reached the drugstore, the ramifications of leaving a total stranger sitting at my kitchen table.

“You been down to the wreck?” the clerk asked. “They’re saying a hundred people are dead.”

“It’s a pretty bad accident.”

“Some folks,” he whispered conspiratorially, “are saying it ain’t an accident at all. My uncle’s got a scanner. Picks up
everything
.”

“How much do I owe you?” I asked, eager to get back to my apartment.

“Fifty cents,” he said, reaching under the counter for a bag. “I’m going down there as soon as my shift lets out.”

“Thanks,” I said, grabbing the toilet paper, and rushed back to my apartment.

When she wasn’t in the kitchen, I felt something sink inside me, and a sort of panic set in. I set the toilet paper on the kitchen table and peered down the dark hallway. I opened the door to my bedroom and to Shelly’s room. Nothing. I returned to the kitchen and went into the living room, my heart racing.

I’d been too out of it that morning to even pull the blinds; the room was completely dark except for the dusty rays of light shining through the cracks in the shades. I flicked on the overhead lamp worried that this room too would be empty. And so I was startled when I looked down to see the girl curled up on the couch, clutching the green afghan Hanna had made for Shelly’s last birthday. I felt my body sigh, my limbs relax.

In sleep, she looked even younger than she had at the river. Sixteen at the oldest, I imagined. She was holding the edge of the afghan against her cheek with one hand like a child would. Her other hand was cradling her rounded stomach, which poked out from under Shelly’s T-shirt.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock already. Only four hours until Shelly would be home from school. I worried that if she saw my bicycle out front she’d come straight to our apartment rather than going to Mrs. Marigold’s next-door. And there still was the matter of work. I paced around the living room, trying to figure out what to do about the girl sleeping on my couch, until she stirred.

“You can go back to work,” she said softly. “I ain’t going to steal nothin’.”

“I
know
that,” I said, stung.

As she slept, I went next-door to Mrs. Marigold’s and told her that my third cousin, a relative of my mother’s, by marriage, my
adopted
cousin from Louisiana, had just come visiting, that she was sleeping on my couch. Mrs. Marigold stood with her hands on her hips, scowling at me as she abandoned a pile of half-peeled potatoes. I told her about the train wreck, that my cousin had gotten off the train unharmed, but that she was exhausted from the trauma of it, and that I was headed back to work and maybe back to the river to help out with the accident if they needed me. And finally, when she looked at me, confused not only by my convoluted story but by why I was telling it to her at all, I asked her if she could make sure Shelly got a good dinner tonight. That she did her homework. That I might be later than usual but that I would be by to pick her up after supper. Mrs. Marigold smiled and picked up the potato peeler. “Honey, don’t you worry yourself about Shelly. You come by to get her whenever you want.”

I checked on the girl one more time, and she was still asleep. I pulled the afghan gently up over her and turned off the light again. I found her pile of wet clothes on the bathroom floor and put them in the dryer. The wet fabric slapped around the inside of the machine, thumping rhythmically as I locked her inside the apartment and bounded down the stairs. I would figure out what to do after I got home. Maybe by then the girl would be having second thoughts and would call her father. She was probably still in shock about the accident. A good rest was probably all she needed. Some dinner. Some nice warm, dry clothes.