Christine (59 page)

We looked at them silently:

 on the right;

 on the left.

Leigh looked at me, questioning and puzzled. "Those are pieces of your—"

"My casts, yeah."

"Is it… a joke, or something?"

"No joke. I watched him sign both of them." Now that it was out, there was a queer kind of loosening, or relief. It was good to be able to share this. It had been on my mind for a long time, itching and digging away.

"But they don't look anything alike."

"You're telling me," I said. "But Arnie isn't much like he used to be either. And it all goes back to that goddam car." I poked savagely at the square of plaster on the left. "That isn't his signature. I've known Arnie almost all my life. I've seen his homework papers, I've seen him send away for things, I've watched him endorse his paychecks,
and that is not his signature.
The one on the left, yes. This one, no. You want to do something for me tomorrow, Leigh?"

"What?"

I told her. She nodded slowly. "For us."

"Huh?"

"I'll do it for us. Because we have to do something, don't we?"

"Yes," I said. "I guess so. You mind a personal question?" She shook her head, her remarkable blue eyes never leaving mine."

"How have you been sleeping lately?"

"Not so well," she said. "Bad dreams. How about you?"

"No. Not so good.

And then, because I couldn't help myself anymore, I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her. There was a momentary hesitation, and I thought she was going to draw away then her chin came up and she kissed me back, firmly and fully. Maybe it was sort of lucky at that, me being mostly immobilized.

When the kiss was over she looked into my eyes, questioning.

"Against the dreams," I said, thinking it would come out stupid and phony-smooth, the way it looks on paper, but instead it sounded shaky and almost painfully honest.

"Against the dreams," she repeated gravely, as if it were a talisman, and this time she inclined her head towards me and we kissed again with those two ragged squares of plaster staring up at us like blind white eyes with Arnie's name written across them. We kissed for the simply animal comfort that comes with animal contact—sure, that, and something more, starting to be something more—and then we held each other without talking, and I don't think we were kidding ourselves about what was happening—at least not entirely. It was comfort, but it was also good old sex—full, ripe, and randy with teenage hormones. And maybe it had a chance to be something fuller and kinder than just sex.

But there was something else in those kisses—I knew it, she knew it, and probably you do too. That other thing was a shameful sort of betrayal. I could feel eighteen years of memories cry out—the ant farms, the chess games, the movies, the things he had taught me, the times I had kept him from getting killed. Except maybe in the end, I hadn't. Maybe I had seen the last of him—and a poor, rag-tag end at that—on Thanksgiving night, when he brought me the turkey sandwiches and beer.

I don't think it occurred to either of us until then that we had done nothing unforgivable to Arnie—nothing that might anger Christine.

But now, of course, we had.

44 DETECTIVE WORK

Well, when the pipeline gets broken

And I'm lost on the river-bridge,

I'm all cracked up on the highway

And in the water's edge,

Medics come down the Thruway,

Ready to sew me up with the thread,

And if I fall down dyin

Y'know she's
bound
to put a blanket

on my bed.

—
Bob Dylan

What happened in the next three weeks or so was that Leigh and I played detective, and we fell in love.

She went down to the Municipal Offices the next day and paid fifty cents to have two papers xeroxed—those papers got to Harrisburg, but Harrisburg sends a copy back to the town.

This time my family was home when Leigh arrived. Ellie peeked in on us whenever she got the chance. She was fascinated by Leigh. and I was quietly amused when, about a week into the new year, she started wearing her hair tied back as Leigh did. I was tempted to get on her case about it… and withstood the temptation. Maybe I was growing up a little bit (but not enough to keep from sneaking one of her Yodels when I saw one hidden behind the Tupperware bowls of leftovers in the refrigerator).

Except for Ellie's occasional peeks, we had the living room mostly to ourselves that next afternoon, the 27th of December, after the social amenities had been observed. I introduced Leigh to my mother and father, my mom served coffee, and we talked. Elaine talked the most—chattering about her school and asking Leigh all sorts of questions about ours. At first I was annoyed, and then I was grateful. Both my parents are the soul of middle-class politeness (if my mom was being led to the electric chair and bumped into the chaplain, she would excuse herself), and I felt pretty clearly that they liked Leigh, but it was also obvious—to me, at least—that they were puzzled and a little uncomfortable, wondering where Arnie fitted into all this.

Which was what Leigh and I were wondering ourselves, I guess. Finally they did what parents usually do when they're puzzled in such situations—they dismissed it as kid business and went about their own business. Dad excused himself first, saying that his workshop in the basement was in its usual post-Christmas shambles and he ought to start doing something about it. Mom said she wanted to do some writing.

Ellie looked at me solemnly and said, "Dennis, did Jesus have a dog?"

I cracked up and so did Ellie, Leigh sat watching us laugh, smiling politely the way outsiders do when it's a family joke.

"Split, Ellie," I said.

"What'll you do if I won't?" she asked, but it was only routine brattiness; she was already getting up.

"Make you wash my underwear," I said.

"The hell you
will
!" Ellie declared grandly, and left the room.

"My little sister," I said.

Leigh was smiling. "She's great."

"If you had to live with her full-time you might change your mind. Let's see what you've got."

Leigh put one of the Xerox copies on the glass coffee table where the pieces of my casts had been yesterday.

It was the re-registration of a used car, 1958 Plymouth sedan (4-door), red and white. It was dated November 1, 1978, and signed Arnold Cunningham. His father had co-signed for him:

"What does that look like to you?" I asked.

"One of the signatures on one of the squares you showed me," she said. "Which one?"

"It's the one he signed just after I got crunched in Ridge Rock," I said. "It's the way his signature always looked. Now let's see the other one."

She put it down beside the first. This was a registration slip for a new car, 1958 Plymouth sedan (4-door), red and white. It was dated November 1, 1957—I felt a nasty jolt at that exact similarity, and one look at Leigh's face told me she had seen it too.

"Look at the signature," she said quietly.

I did.

This was the handwriting Arnie had used on Thanksgiving evening, you didn't have to be a genius or a handwriting expert to see that. The names were different, but the writing was exactly the same.

Leigh reached for my hands, and I took hers.

What my father did in his basement workshop was make toys. I suppose that might sound a little weird to you, but it's his hobby, Or maybe something more than a hobby—I think there might have been a time in his life when he had to make a difficult choice between going to college and going out on his own to become a toymaker. If that's true, then I guess he chose the safe way. Sometimes I think I see it in his eyes, like an old ghost not quite laid to rest, but that is probably only my imagination, which used to be a lot less active than it is now.

Ellie and I were the chief beneficiaries, but Arnie had also found some of my father's toys under various Christmas trees and beside various birthday cakes, as had Ellie's closest childhood friend Aimee Carruthers (long since moved to Nevada and now referred to in the doleful tones reserved for those who have died young and senselessly) and many other chums.

Now my dad gave most of what he made to the Salvation Army 400 Fund, and before Christmas the basement always reminded me of Santa's workshop—until just before Christmas it would be filled with neat white cardboard cartons containing wooden trains, little tool-chests., Erector-set clocks that really kept time, stuffed animals, a small puppet theatre or two. His main interest was in wooden toys (up until the Vietnam war he had made battalions of toy soldiers, but in the last five years or so they had been quietly phased out—even now I'm not sure he was aware he was doing it), but like a good spray hitter, my dad went to all fields. During the week after Christmas there was a hiatus. The workshop would seem terribly empty, with only the sweet smell of sawdust to remind us that the toys had ever been there.

In that week he would sweep, clean, oil his machinery, and get ready for next year. Then, as the winter wore on through January and February, the toys and the seeming junk that would become parts of toys would begin appearing again—trains and joined wooden ballerinas with red spots of color on their cheeks, a box of stuffing raked out of someone's old couch that would later end in a bear's belly (my father called every one of his bears Owen or Olive—I had worn out six Owen Bears between infancy and second grade, and Ellie had worn out a like number of Olive Bears), little snips of wire, buttons, and flat, disembodied eyes scattered across the worktable like something out of a pulp horror story. Last, the liquor-store boxes would appear, and the toys would again be packed into them.

In the last three years he had gotten three awards from the Salvation Army, but he kept them hidden away in a drawer, as if he was ashamed of them. I didn't understand it then and don't now—not completely—but I know it wasn't shame. My father had nothing to be ashamed of.

I worked my way down that evening after supper, clutching the bannister madly with one arm and using my other crutch like a ski-pole.