The way he said it sent a chill through me. It was as though he knew. And suddenly I felt defensive. Was he telling me his grandson wasn't worth it?
When it was time to go in for dinner, I still didn't feel right, but at least the tornado was gone. Mom said Dad was working late, and since the boys were off with their friends, it was just the two of us. She told me that she and Dad had talked about it and that they both felt a little strange having Chet come over like he was. Maybe, she said, they should find a way to pay him for his help.
I told her I thought Chet would find that insulting, but the next day she went ahead and insulted him anyway. Chet said, “No, Mrs. Baker. It's been my pleasure to help out your daughter on this project,” and wouldn't hear another word about it.
The week ended with my dad loading the back of his truck with all the clippings and scraps before he set off for work on Saturday morning. Then Chet and I spent the rest
of the day hoeing up weeds and raking and readying the dirt for seeding.
It was on this last day that Chet asked, “Your family's not moving, are you?”
“Moving? Why do you say that?”
“Oh, my daughter brought up the possibility at the dinner table last night. She thought that maybe you're fixing up the house because you're getting ready to sell it.”
Even though Chet and I had talked about a lot of things while we were working, I probably wouldn't have told him about Mr. Finnegan or Uncle David or why the yard was such a mess if he hadn't asked me about moving. But since he had, well, I wound up telling him everything. And it felt good to talk about it. Especially about Uncle David. It felt like blowing a dandelion into the wind and watching all the little seeds float off, up and away. I was proud of my parents, and looking around the front yard, I was proud of me, too. Just wait until I got my hands on the backyard! Then maybe I'd even paint the house. I could do it. I
could
.
Chet was pretty quiet after I told him the story, and when Mom brought us out sandwiches at lunchtime, we sat on the porch and ate without saying a word. Then he broke the silence by nodding across the street and saying, “I don't know why he doesn't just come out and say hello.”
“Who?” I asked, then looked across the street to where he'd nodded. The curtain in Bryce's room moved quickly back into place, and I couldn't help asking, “Bryce?”
“That's the third time I've seen him watching.”
“Really?” My heart was fluttering about like a baby bird trying to fly.
He frowned and said, “Let's finish up and get that seed sown, shall we? You'll want the warmth of the day to help with the germination.”
I was happy to finally be planting the yard, but I couldn't help being distracted by Bryce's window. Was he watching? During the rest of the afternoon, I checked more often than I'd like to admit. And I'm afraid Chet noticed, too, because when we were all done and we'd congratulated each other on what was sure to be a fine-looking yard, he said, “He may be acting like a coward now, but I do hold out hope for the boy.”
A coward? What on earth could I say to that? I just stood there with the hose in one hand and the spigot valve beneath the other.
And with that, Chet waved so long and walked across the street.
A few minutes later I saw Bryce coming down the sidewalk toward his house. I did a double take. All this time I'd thought he was inside the house watching, and he was really outside walking around? I was embarrassed all over again.
I turned my back on him and concentrated on watering the yard. What a fool I was! What a complete idiot! And I had just built up a nice head of angry steam when I heard, “It's looking good, Juli. Nice job.”
It was Bryce, standing right there on our driveway. And suddenly I wasn't mad at me anymore. I was mad at him. How could he stand there like my supervisor and tell me, Nice job? He had no business saying
anything
after what he'd done.
I was about to hose him down when he said, “I'm sorry for what I did, Juli. It was, you know… wrong.”
I looked at him—into those brilliant blue eyes. And I
tried to do what Chet had said—I tried to look past them. What was behind them? What was he thinking? Was he really sorry? Or was he just feeling bad about the things he'd said?
It was like looking into the sun, though, and I had to turn away.
I couldn't tell you what we talked about after that, except that he was nice to me and he made me laugh. And after he left, I shut off the water and went inside feeling very, very strange.
The rest of the evening I bounced back and forth between upset and uneasy. The worst part being, I couldn't really put my finger on what exactly I was upset or uneasy about. Of course it was Bryce, but why wasn't I just mad? He'd been such a … scoundrel. Or happy? Why wasn't I just happy? He'd come over to our house. He'd stood on our driveway. He'd said nice things. We'd laughed.
But I wasn't mad or happy. And as I lay in bed trying to read, I realized that upset had been overshadowed by uneasy. I felt as though someone was watching me. I got so spooked I even got up and checked out the window and in the closet and under the bed, but still the feeling didn't go away.
It took me until nearly midnight to understand what it was.
It was me. Watching me.
Sunday I woke up feeling like I'd been sick with the flu. Like I'd had one of those bad, convoluted, unexplainable fever dreams.
And what I've figured out about bad, convoluted, unexplainable dreams of any kind is that you've just got to shake them off. Try to forget that they ever happened.
I shook it off, all right, and got out of bed early 'cause I had eaten almost nothing the night before and I was starving! But as I was trucking into the kitchen, I glanced into the family room and noticed that my dad was sacked out on the couch.
This was not good. This was a sign of battles still in progress, and it made me feel like an invader in my own territory.
He rolled over and kind of groaned, then curled up tighter under his skinny little quilt and muttered some pretty unfriendly-sounding stuff into his pillow.
I beat it into the kitchen and poured myself a killer bowl of corn flakes. And I was about to drown it in milk when my mother comes waltzing in and snags it away from me. “You are going to wait, young man,” she says. “This family is going to have Sunday breakfast together.”
“But I'm starving!”
“So are the rest of us. Now go! I'm making pancakes, and you're taking a shower. Go!”
Like a shower's going to prevent imminent starvation.
But I headed down to the bathroom, and on my way I noticed that the family room was empty. The quilt was folded and back on the armrest, the pillow was gone…it was like I'd imagined the whole thing.
At breakfast my father didn't
look
like he'd spent the night on the couch. No bags under his eyes, no whiskers on his chin. He was decked out in tennis shorts and a lavender polo shirt, and his hair was all blown dry like it was a workday. Personally I thought the shirt looked kind of girly, but my mom said, “You look very nice this morning, Rick.”
My father just eyed her suspiciously.
Then my grandfather came in, saying, “Patsy, the house smells wonderful! Good morning, Rick. Hi there, Bryce,” and winked at me as he sat down and put his napkin in his lap.
“Lyn-et-ta!” my mother sang out. “Break-fast!”
My sister appeared in a triple-X miniskirt and platform shoes, with eyes that were definitely of the raccoon variety. My mother gasped, but then took a deep breath and said, “Good morning, honey. You're… you're …I thought you were going to church this morning with your friends.”
“I am.” Lynetta scowled and sat down.
Mom brought pancakes, fried eggs, and hash browns to the table. My father just sat there stiff as a board for a minute, but finally he shook out his napkin and tucked it into his collar.
“Well,” my mother said as she sat down, “I have come up with a solution to our situation.”
“Here it comes …,” my father muttered, but my mother gave him a glare that shut him down cold.
“The solution is …,” my mom said as she served herself some pancakes, “… we're going to invite the Bakers over for dinner.”
My father blurts out,
“What?”;
Lynetta asks, “
All
of them?”; I put in, “Are you
serious
?”; but my grandfather heaps on another fried egg and says, “That, Patsy, is a marvelous idea.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she says with a smile, then tells Lynetta and me, “Of course I'm serious, and yes, if Juli and the boys want to come, they'll be invited.”
My sister starts cracking up. “Do you know what you're saying?”
Mom smooths the napkin into her lap. “Maybe it's about time I found out.”
Lynetta turns to me and says, “She's inviting the core of Piss Poor over for dinner — oh,
this
is something I really woke up expecting!”
My father shakes his head and says, “Patsy, what purpose does this serve? So I made some stupid cracks last night. Is this the next phase in my punishment?”
“It is something we should have done years ago.”
“Patsy, please. I know you feel bad about what you found out, but an awkward dinner party isn't going to change anything!”
My mother ran syrup all over her pancakes, popped the top closed, licked her finger, then locked eyes with my dad. “We are having the Bakers over for dinner.”
And that, she didn't have to tell him, was that.
Dad took a deep breath, then sighed and said, “Whatever you want, Patsy. Just don't say I didn't warn you.” He took a bite of hash browns and mumbled, “A barbecue, I suppose?”
“No, Rick. A sit-down dinner. Like we have when your clients come over.”
He stopped chewing. “You're expecting them to dress up?”
Mom glared at him. “What I'm expecting is for you to behave like the gentleman I always thought you were.”
Dad went back to his potatoes. Definitely safer than arguing with Mom.
Lynetta wound up eating the entire white of a fried egg and almost a whole pancake besides. Plain, of course, but from the way she was glutting and giggling as she ate, it was obvious that at least she was in a good mood.
Granddad ate plenty, even for him, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking. He was back to looking more granite than human. Me, I'd started tuning in to the fact that this dinner could be more than awkward — it could be trouble. Those rotten eggs were back from the grave, looming large and smelly right over my head.
Sure, Granddad knew, but no one else in my family did. What if it came up at dinner? I'd be dead, fried, cluck-faced meat.
Later, as I was brushing my teeth, I considered bribing Juli. Getting her on board so that nobody brought up the subject of eggs. Or maybe I could sabotage the dinner somehow. Make it not happen. Yeah, I could — I stopped
myself and looked in the mirror. What kind of wimp was I, anyway? I spit and headed back to find my mom.
“What is it, honey?” she asked me as she wiped off the griddle. “You look worried.”
I double-checked to make sure my dad or Lynetta wasn't lurking around somewhere, then whispered, “Will you swear to secrecy?”
She laughed. “I don't know about
that
.”
I just waited.
“What can be …,” she said, then looked at me and stopped cleaning. “Oh, it
is
serious. Honey, what's wrong?”
It had been ages since I'd voluntarily fessed up about something to my mom. It just didn't seem necessary anymore; I'd learned to deal with things on my own. At least, that's what I'd thought. Until now.
She touched my arm and said, “Bryce, tell me. What is it?”
I hopped up to sit on the counter, then took a deep breath and said, “It's about Juli's eggs.”
“About her … eggs?”
“Yeah. Remember that whole chicken-hen-salmonella disaster?”
“That was quite a while ago, but sure….”
“Well, what you don't know is that Juli didn't bring eggs over just that once. She's been bringing them over every week…or about that, anyway.”
“She has? Why didn't I know about this?”
“Well, I was afraid Dad would get mad at me for not telling her we didn't want them, so I started intercepting them. I'd see her coming, get to her before she rang the
bell, and then I'd toss them in the trash before anyone knew she'd been here.”
“Oh, Bryce!”
“Well, I kept thinking they'd stop! How long can a stupid chicken lay eggs?”
“But I take it they have stopped?”
“Yeah. As of last week. Because Juli caught me chucking a carton in the trash outside.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Exactly.”
“So what did you tell her?”
I looked down and mumbled, “I told her that we were afraid of salmonella poisoning because their yard was such a mess. She ran off crying, and the next thing I know, she's starting to fix up their yard.”
“Oh, Bryce!”
“Exactly.”
She was dead quiet for a minute; then very softly she said, “Thank you for your honesty, Bryce. It does help to explain a lot.” She shook her head and said, “What that family must think of us,” and got back to cleaning the griddle. “All the more reason to have them over for dinner, if you ask me.”
I whispered, “You're sworn to secrecy on this whole egg thing, right? I mean, Juli told Granddad, so he knows, but I don't want this to spread to, you know, Dad.”
She studied me a minute, then said, “Tell me you've learned your lesson, honey.”
“I have, Mom.”
“Okay, then.”
I let out a big sigh of relief. “Thanks.”
“Oh, and Bryce?”
“Yeah?”
“I'm very glad you told me about it.” She kissed me on the cheek, then smiled and said, “Now, didn't I hear you promise you'd mow the lawn today?”
“Right,” I said, and headed outside to trim the turf.
That evening my mother announced that the Bakers would be over Friday night at six o'clock; that the menu included poached salmon, crab risotto, and fresh steamed vegetables; and that none of us had better weasel out of being there. My dad muttered that if we were really going to do this, it would be a whole lot better to barbecue because at least that way he'd have something to do, but my mom positively smoked him with her eyes and he dropped it.