We Five (19 page)

“Call me,” she said.

He had nodded and clumped back to the shuttle van, planting each foot carefully upon the concrete walk to the driveway so as not to slip on the slick ice.

Carrie didn't tell her mother about the kiss, or about Will seeming to really like her. But she was honest in admitting she was very interested in him, and yes, she'd probably be seeing him again.

Then she talked about the catfish and the ribs and the “crawdads.” She knew her mother, herself a child of the Delta (Greenwood), also loved crayfish. Carrie conveniently neglected to mention that there had also been some drinking on the order of two Lemon Drops (Molly), one Fuzzy Navel each (Jane and Carrie), two Sea Breezes (Ruth), and a Diet Coke, plus refill, for non-imbiber Maggie. And why shouldn't she leave this out? None of the girls had overindulged. Ruth had left the club a little buzzed, but it had worn off long before she'd gotten home.

Of course, Sylvia knew. She smelled the peach schnapps on her daughter's breath. After all, Sylvia Hale wasn't born yesterday.

She let it pass. She only wished she'd been there too. She would have ordered a strawberry daiquiri.

Jane noticed upon her return to the rooms she shared with her brother at the back of the antique store that several lights had been left on. She turned them off while grumbling to herself that he could have thought a little about their electric bill before going out for the night. Or
had
he gone out? The previous night, when We Five had gotten together to eat Domino's pepperoni and talk about what they were going to wear on their group date, he'd been in his room (and never once ventured out, just as he'd promised). More than likely, thought Jane, Lyle would make up for it tonight. He'd be off with his buddies till all hours, either blowing money he couldn't afford to blow at one of the nearby casinos or drinking himself cross-eyed at some titty bar fifteen miles up the road in Southaven. (Also something he couldn't afford to do, but which he did anyway once or twice a week.)

She opened the door to his room nonetheless, and discovered she'd been mistaken in her first assumption. He was there. He was awake. And he was doing something she'd never seen him do before.

Startled, he threw himself involuntarily over the sketchpad which had been resting on his knees. There was a book next to him, propped open. He'd been working with colored pencils, copying one of the images from the book; Jane couldn't quite make it out from where she stood in the doorway.

“What are you doin'?” she asked.

“Why do you just barge in here like that?”

“The door was unlocked. If you were in here with your girly magazines you'd have it locked and I'd mind my own business. Are you
drawing
?”

“So it appears.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean:
why
?”

“I don't know. I just—Lyle, I never knew you liked to draw.”

Lyle closed the sketchpad so Jane, who was craning her neck to get a better look, wouldn't have any idea as to what he'd been sketching. The open book gave her a clue, though. Stepping closer, she was able to glimpse a pastoral scene—a verdant grassy hill with a flock of sheep on it—before he slammed that shut too.

“I thought you'd still be out,” Jane said, “or conked out in front of the television with a can of Budweiser balanced on your knee. I found you like
that
one night. I almost took a picture. I can't believe you don't even have the radio on.”

“I like silence when I draw. Total quiet.”

Jane sat down on the bed. Lyle was sitting Indian-style at the end, his back pushed against the wall, his cluttered side table pulled over so he'd have a place to prop up the book he was sketching from.

“How long have you been doin' this?”

Lyle shrugged. “I don't know. A while.”

“Can I see your sketchbook?”

“I don't think so.”

“I think it's great.”

“Thanks, but your approval don't make no difference to me.”

Lyle got up. He tucked his sketchpad and the art book into his bookcase. It was mostly an open junk cabinet, but it did have a few books there. Jane hadn't noticed before, but almost all the books were art-related.

“I mean seriously, Lyle. How long have you been sketching?”

“You really interested? Five, six months.”

“Wow.” The word was nearly inaudible, as if Jane had intended to keep her amazement to herself.

“Isn't it way past your bedtime?” he asked.

“I know it's late, but I'm keyed up. Now I know what you mean when you sometimes say you're too wired to sleep.”

“Did you let him in your pants?”

“Don't be gross. We all had a nice time.”

“Does he want to see you again?”

Jane smiled. She tried not to, but she couldn't help herself. “I think so.”

“What's he look like? Is he mule-faced like us?”

Jane got up. “Why do you do this? Why do you assume the only man who'd ever want to take me out would have to look like Beavis or or or or Butthead? Which one's the ugly one?”

“They're both pretty fucking ugly. I'm sorry. Sit down.”

Jane sat back down.

“Do you want a beer?”

“Okay.”

Lyle went to the little mini fridge he kept in his room and got a frosty can of Bud for each of them. He popped the cap on both before he sat down.

Then he said, “You know those paintings of the countryside the old woman brought in a few weeks ago?”

“You mean the ones we took for the frames? You were gonna toss the pictures into the incinerator.”

“Well, I never did.”

“They were pretty awful, Lyle.”

“Of course they were. But the more I looked at 'em, the more they got me to thinkin'—Dad was a good artist, I mean, back when he was young. And I liked to draw when I was kid, remember?”

Jane nodded.

“So it's kind of in the genes. Well, I kept lookin' at those crappy paintings the woman brought in and I started sayin' to myself: ‘Hell,
I
could paint better than
that.
I mean, if I worked at it.'”

“I like it you're tryin' something different.” Jane touched her brother's hand, taking a swig of her beer.

“Don't talk down to me.”

“I don't know any other way to talk to you, Lyle.”

“You're funny. My life is a shit pit. This ain't no big news bulletin. Both of our lives are shit. You're workin' as a cocktail waitress at a casino. And when I
do
have the store open, the people who come in—they know the stuff we're sellin' here ain't antiques, even though that's what the sign says. They know it's all junk. Crap. And I'm tired of trying to sell it to them. I wanna do somethin' different. So that's what I'm doing: I'm trying somethin' different. Like you meeting that Katz guy and all of a sudden you're walkin' around here with a kind of smile on your face I ain't never seen before.”

“I made a New Year's resolution, Lyle: that I was gonna shake up
my
life this year.”

Lyle smiled. “It looks like you're shaking up
everybody's
lives in the bargain. I mean, you and your four gal pals. Never thought I'd see the five of you going out on a what—a quadruple—”

“Quintuple, I think it is.”

“—date. It's like I'm in some kind of alternate reality where everybody's almost normal.”

Jane play-glowered. “I'm glad you're happy for me. Show me your sketchbook.”

“Why?”

“I wanna see your work. Please.”

Lyle went to the bookcase to retrieve the pad. “I'm just starting out,” he hedged.

“I won't judge you.”

The sketches, each taken from famous landscape paintings and rendered in colored pencil, were good.
Very
good. Jane didn't say a word. She just shook her head in undisguised amazement. And for the next twenty minutes, she didn't think of Tom Katz at all.

However, later, alone in her bedroom, she allowed her thoughts to return to the young man who had made her laugh and think quite differently about herself. Sleep wouldn't be coming any time soon for Jane Higgins.

Maggie stood in the doorway watching her mother sleep. Clara Barton didn't snore per se, but because of constantly clogged sinuses, she often breathed through her mouth when she slept. Someone once told Maggie the word for it; her mother
chuffled.

Part of Maggie wished her mother had been awake when she got home so she could tell her all about the night she'd just spent. In spite of her pair-up for the night being a first-class dick, she'd still had a great time. It was fun seeing her sisters let their hair down and get silly and flirty—showing sides to themselves Maggie hadn't thought existed.

But how the hell did she get Jerry Castle? He wasn't even all that good-looking—that is, compared to Carrie's Will and Molly's Pat, and Jane's Tom, who looked like a particular rock star whose name she couldn't quite conjure up. Jerry had a high forehead, which came partly from the fact that there was simply a lot of head above his eyebrows. But, as it turned out, his hair was also receding. An “early receder.” Just like Maggie's father. She guessed Jerry would be totally bald by the time he was thirty.

And it would serve him right. Jerry Castle had a Mack truck– sized ego and a real mouth on him; he was brash and smart-assed in a way that could never be considered attractive. Plus, he kept grabbing her leg to the point where she had to tell him off. In front of everybody. Maggie wondered why his friends put up with him. In the ladies' room, she asked Jane if
she
knew. Jane guessed it was because Jerry had had to overcome a pretty sucky childhood. According to Tom, Jerry's father had been a real tightwad. He was assistant manager of a Hickory Farms store and Jerry grew up eating mostly castoff cheese and nitrite-embalmed summer sausage. Jerry's buddies probably felt sorry for him.

“Just because you had bad breaks when you were a kid is no reason to act like an asshole when you grow up,” Maggie had replied, checking her teeth in the mirror to make sure some of the rib meat hadn't gotten stuck in a way that would be unsightly when she opened her large Julia Roberts–esque mouth to laugh or talk. “Look at Ruth,” Maggie pushed her point with Jane, who was applying a little of Molly's Tommy Girl perfume to the back of her ears. “Ruth had the very same messed-up childhood and she's as nice as can be.”

“Did you just wake up from a
coma
?” retorted Jane. “Ruth has an edge you could use for a Weed Wacker. I've seen it. You have too.”

“But she doesn't talk over people and blabber her opinion all the time and use the ‘F' word for all the different parts of speech.”

Jane snickered. “He
does
have one big ol' gutter mouth on him, don't he?” Jane turned to Maggie, her look suddenly sympathetic. “Oh, you really
don't
like him, do you? I'm so sorry, Mags. I tried to match everybody up right, but it looks like you got the short straw, didn't you? You're not gonna hold that against me, are you? I mean, you don't have to ever see him again.”

“I won't hold it against you, if you do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Talk me up to…” She pointed to the word ‘Tommy' on the perfume bottle. “I think I like him.”

Jane sucked in her lips. Then, dourly: “You can't have Tommy. Tommy is spoken for.”

“
Really
, Jane?” said Maggie, not even trying to hide her annoyance. “You and Tommy? You're
serious
?”

“Mags, you can be such a bitch. Yes, I'm serious. As it so happens, he's already said he wants to see me again. Without his entourage. And I said yes.”

Maggie's bead-eyed stare said she still didn't believe her.

“You'll just have to make do with Jerry or nobody at all,” said Jane, now in a full-fledged huff. “I'm sure he don't act like that much of an asshole when his buddies aren't around. He's just a showoff, is all.”

“He makes my flesh crawl.”

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, but that's the breaks, Mags. You're very pretty. You can have anybody you want—I mean, if you actually opened yourself up to possibilities. It ain't my fault you haven't put yourself out there.”

“I don't like any of the boys in Bellevenue. They talk like hicks and have dirt under their fingernails.”

“Then, honey, you should go someplace else. Especially now that your mother and Molly's father are gettin' married and you don't have to look after her no more.”

Maggie nodded. “I just might. Even though you'll all miss me. At least I
hope
you'll all miss me.”

Jane reached over and pulled Maggie to her so the two could hug. “Of course we'll miss you. You know how much we love you.”

“If you really loved me, you'd let me have Tommy and
you
can take Jerry.”

“He won't want me. I'm ugly, remember? Besides which, he makes my skin crawl too.” Jane pulled back so she could brush a strand of hair from her friend's eyes. “Honey, just get yourself through tonight. It'll all be over real quick.”

Maggie appreciated the thought, even though she didn't say so. She forced herself to smile in a way that didn't look forced. “I hope you and Carrie and Molly don't schedule your three weddings
too
close together. The ‘always a bridesmaid' thing—well, it's gonna get very old for me very fast.”

“You
funny
lady,” said Jane, imitating the impatiently indulgent immigrant waitress at the Chinese restaurant We Five sometimes went to in Bellevenue. “
Now what you ordah
?”

No. Maggie couldn't talk to her mother about any of this. She let her sleep. Maggie got ready for bed, but she knew she wouldn't be able to turn off her brain.
Was
there a little something there—between Jerry and her? A little something about that gauche, foulmouthed, all-but-certainly racist and anti-Semitic and xenophobic Jerry Castle that redeemed him just the teensiest little bit? Maybe he had a secret life in which he nuzzled kittens and puppies, and took meals to shut-ins and taught Sunday school to five-year-olds when nobody was looking. Maybe he was a good lover, or at the very least a good kisser. Of course, Maggie lost her chance to find
that
out when she'd refused to let him even walk her to her front door.