The Cheer Leader (25 page)

By the end of March, it is so warm that everyone starts lying out in the sun. Even Jo Spencer can do this because she has had a great deal of experience. She puts on her old one piece that she was wearing (What was it? Two years ago?) when Red came up and introduced himself but she doesn't even think of this because she has remembered to forget him. She is so thin and trim, just the way that a girl of her age should be.

“Jo,” Beck squeals. “Aren't you going to shave your legs?” Jo looks down at the hairs that she has so carefully cultivated. Beck has shaved her legs, silky smooth, hairless, but isn't that dishonest? To hide your roots? “I don't have a razor,” she says.

“You mean that you've never shaved your legs?” Beck is laughing. “How could you ever sleep with anyone without shaving your legs?” Beck says “ever” like she is horrified. But, Jo Spencer does not sleep with people, so what they don't see can't hurt them.

“I used to,” she says and knows that this is true. She doesn't remember when she stopped. She just knows that once she did and now she doesn't.

“Used to what? Shave your legs or sleep with someone without shaving your legs?” Beck finds this terribly funny. C'est terrible.

“Shave,” she says. “I don't do the other.” This makes Beck laugh even harder.

“So what if you do or don't? It's no big deal.” Did Beck really say that? No big deal? “Here, you can use my razor.” Beck fishes around in the plastic bucket that she carries to and from the shower.

“Oh no, I couldn't,” she says. “I couldn't use another person's razor.”

“You think I've got skin disease or something?” Beck laughs again with her head thrown back just the way that people are supposed to laugh. “You're a weird bird, Jo Spencer.” Beck picks up her towel and baby oil. “Come on, we're missing the very best sun.” Jo Spencer follows Beck down the long flight of stairs and the floor is cool to her bare feet. Outside it is very hot and there are tons of girls like flies in bright bikinis swarming all around. She hopes that Beck will not call one of these girls over to join them.

Jo Spencer spreads out her towel and lies very still. It
feels so good that if she could, she would just go to sleep in this warmth. There is a transistor radio playing somewhere but she can't tell what the song is. She can only hear sparse fragmented notes that occasionally rise above the buzzing.

“I can't stay out here long,” Jo Spencer says and rubs some baby oil on her legs. It makes all the hairs stand up like teeny tiny soldiers, an army marching in place to different drummers. “I've got Geology today.”

“This is the time of year to cut classes,” Beck says. “You've been studying too hard lately. The year's almost over!”

“But, I'm not doing real well in that class,” she says and closes her eyes. It is so bright that when she closes her eyes, she sees all the colors and when she opens them, she sees the black spots that grow and grow. She sees that magnolia tree, so green and cool, so different from the way it looks at night.

The geology professor is boring but she never gets bored because there is too much to think about. The good thing about Geology is the words. The bad part about Geology is defining rocks because there IS a right answer, a correct definition and that is no fun. Who gives a damn? She feels like a fool licking, scratching and sniffing rocks. She must do something else. She must pretend that she is listening and taking good notes, write frantically, though not notes. She can just sit and make a list of the good words, words like
erode
and
debris, lode, core, meandering, silt, buried, glacier, ice, stone, brittle,
all of those words that can be so apt if she chooses to describe a person. Yes, those are good words but they make her very tired, the residue, the erosion, and so she must leave class, tiptoe away, get some sleep before it gets too dark.

She is trying to find him because something horrible is going to happen. She is not certain how or when or where; she just knows that it is going to happen and she must find him, warn him. He is so hard to find and it is so gray, gray fog all around, puffs of gray that swirl and swirl over the tall fields of weeds. Her feet are so heavy, her body, so heavy but there is the lake, yes, but she can barely see for the gray. There is a dock at the end of the pier and she must look there, yes, look, but hurry. There is a little house on the dock but it is empty. The wind is whipping faster and faster and the door creaks on its rusty hinges, the windows slam shut, open, shut. There is a buzzing, low at first and then louder, a steady drone getting louder and louder. She runs out of the house to the end of the pier. Wait! Wait! she yells but her voice is swallowed by the drone. There is a boat and she can see the lower half because the fog is clear there. It is a party and everyone that she knows is there. There is Bobby, Andy, Mama and Daddy; Tricia, Cindy, Lisa; Pat Reeves, the Monroes, teachers from Kindergarten and grammar school, high school; her poetry professor is serving coffee and he is wearing the most beautiful yellow hat. It looks like he sees her so she waves and yells as loud as she can, but no, he doesn't see her; they can't hear her. They are having a party and throwing confetti and they
can't see her. The boat is moving out now, but she can't stop screaming because he is there somewhere. The boat moves further and further away and the fog lifts. The droning is so loud that she has to hold her ears. Now the sky is bright blue and the whistle sounds. Up on the top, leaning over the edge, are Lucille and Bertram. Lucille has her face, the long auburn hair but she knows it is Lucille because Bertram is beside her. She looks up higher on a small platform that was not there before and he is there. He sees her because his hand waves back and forth mechanically and slow motioned. Her grandmother is beside him looking just the way she did in old photographs, waving the same wave. She yells for them to stop, to wait, but they only wave while Beatrice walks very slowly up on the edge-rail of the boat. Beatrice sees her and waves like the others while the party goes on and on . . . Stop! Make it stop!

“Jo? Jo?” It is Becky, shaking her. “Wake up, Jo.”

She sits suddenly and looks up at the window. It is gray, early morning, not morning; it can't be. “What time is it?”

“Six.” Becky is sitting on her bed reading her history. Becky sleeps late in the morning, doesn't she?

“At night?” She runs and turns on the T.V. The news is on. “I missed it.”

“What?” Becky asks and looks up over her book.

“
Andy Griffith.
”

“Well, I started to wake you up but I figured that you needed some sleep.” She puts down her book and leans forward the way that people always do when they are
concerned, when they want to get intent. “You know you look so tired lately and I never even see you, at least I feel like I don't. You're always asleep when I'm awake.” She moves up closer, her fuzzy pink slippers inching on the rug, closer and closer. “Is anything wrong?” She doesn't even wait for an answer. “Cause you can talk to me. I wouldn't tell a soul.”

She wonders about this. Can she talk to Becky? Does she have anything to say? She starts to pursue the question but the dream comes back like a flash, a jolt. Beatrice, Red, waving—her grandmother, waving, the grandmother that she had never known, the grandmother who had died three years before she was born. Lucille and Bertram were up there, dead, and Beatrice. And Red. Red was up there. “Oh, no,” she screams and her scalp feels bristly like it does when something scary happens—clothes on the closet door when she was five, John Kennedy in the T.V. “It is happening.”

“What? What?” Becky jumps up from the bed, her blue eyes wide and almost frightened.

“It's happened, again,” she says and runs to the phone. The number is easy to remember; she will never forget that number. It rings, rings, rings, “Hello?” It is him; he's alive. “Hello?” Is it him? “Hello?”

“Red?” she whispers. “Is that you?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“You've forgotten me. Just that easy, you forgot.” She wraps the cord around and around her wrist and it looks like a snake bracelet. Yes, you look just like an Ethiopian Princess—goody-goody princess.

“Jo?” At first his voice sounds relieved, saved and then it changes. “What do you want?”

“I had to make sure you were there,” she whispers. “I thought you were . . . gone.”

“Well, thought wrong,” he says and laughs. “You know I'm sort of busy right now, got company.”

“Who? Who?” she asks like a precious little hoot owl.

“Look, it doesn't matter.” He is getting impatient. He probably has his pants off, bunched up around his ankles and there is a lump in the bed, under the sheet; there is someone in her place. “Look, I don't think you ought to call anymore. You know, you're the one that said that we shouldn't see each other or talk anymore.”

“I know,” she says. “But don't you see why I had to find out?”

“No, I don't see any of it. So, why don't you just forget it, okay?” He is lying; he used to see it all; he used to understand.

“Don't you remember that time that the lake was so big? Don't you remember how you said that the future was all planned out?” She is screaming and Becky is watching her; Becky is pretending that she is reading history but Becky is listening and watching her.

“Jo, I don't remember any of that.” His voice gets real low like he doesn't want anyone to hear. “Look, I'd like to help you out. You know lots of your friends are worried about you; some of them even blame me but that's not it; you know that I've never hurt you. So let's keep it that way? Okay?”

“Nothing's wrong with me,” she says. “It was you that
I was worried about. You see, I thought you were dead.” Becky has put down her book now and is staring.

“I think you better go.” He laughs and then stops suddenly, cautiously. “I'm fine. Just leave it at that, okay?”

“Does that mean that you don't love me anymore?”

“I've got to go,” he says quickly. “You take care of yourself.”

She sits, staring at the phone, staring at Becky and she cannot think of one thing that makes sense. He is a liar, a liar. She has warned him, tried to save him so when he dies, it isn't her fault. But, he may need her later; she may have to check again.

“Jo? Is there anything that I can do?” Becky creeps up to her very slowly, like an inchworm, touches her shoulder but it won't stop shaking; she can't stop the shaking.

“Make it stop. Please, make it stop,” she sobs and Becky hugs her tighter, tighter and she can see the robin egg blue over Becky's shoulder and it blurs, the drops of water that hit Becky's new pink oxford cloth shirt and spread. “I'm sorry, Becky,” she says. “You shouldn't see me.”

“That's what friends are for,” Becky whispers. Is Becky her friend? She has never done anything for Becky. “What can I do? Please, just tell me what to do.” Becky is crying, too, just like Lisa had done that time. And what does crying mean? Does it have anything to do with love? Is that why Red made her cry? Is that why she hadn't ever cried for Beatrice? Or had she, ever so lightly, ever so slightly, silently cried beneath the heavy buzzing, in the hospital, the bathroom, at Holden Beach.

“My Daddy can make it stop,” she says. “He loves me.”

“Should I call him?” Becky pushes her back and stares at her as if the answer is going to come quickly, precisely.

“Yes,” she nods. “He can make it stop.” Becky moves away and there is a cold feeling now that she is no longer hanging onto the shoulder of this person that she doesn't even know very well. Becky finds the number up beside the phone and dials slowly. She clears her throat.

“Mrs. Spencer? This is Becky Martin, Jo's roommate.” Silence. “No, she's fine, just upset. Just a minute.” Becky holds the receiver out into the room but she shakes her head and stretches out on the bed; she is so tired, too tired to sleep even though she needs to. “She wants you and Mr. Spencer to come,” Becky whispers as though she can't hear. “Yes, I think so. Oh yes, I'm going to stay right here. Okay, bye.” Becky carefully replaces the receiver so that it doesn't make a sound. A girl from down the hall knocks on the door. “I want to borrow Jo's notes from Geology,” she says.

“Jo isn't feeling well,” Becky says without opening the door all the way. “See if you can get them from someone else.” Becky closes the door and walks back to sit at the end of Jo Spencer's bed. “She wanted your notes,” she says. “I told her that you weren't feeling well,” as though Jo Spencer was incapable of hearing the conversation. This is funny, very funny and she must laugh. She must laugh because there are no notes! Ha! Ha! No notes! She laughs and laughs but Becky doesn't. Becky doesn't find this amusing. She wants to sleep, just sleep, but Becky keeps reminding her that her parents are coming. Becky
turns on the T.V. Then, Becky wants to play cards. Becky is spending time with her and now she is in control; her parents shouldn't be coming at this time of night! They shouldn't drive at night! There is a knock on the door.

“Let me go,” Becky says. “Just in case it isn't them.” That is fine with her. She is just about to gin for the third time in a row. Her Daddy comes in first, his eyes warm but dulled, pipe in his pocket. Her mother is behind him and she doesn't even see her until he steps to one side. Wow! Like personalities splitting apart—Ho! Ho! Ho! Her mother's face is white and frightened; her mother tries to smile but it isn't real—peel it away like the skin of an orange.

“What's the matter, honey?” Her Daddy squats right beside her.

“I'm getting ready to gin,” she says and smiles but it will not stay. It goes away when she hides her face in his shoulder and he rocks her back and forth like a little baby, a little girl. Her mother is there, too, the hand smoothing her long auburn hair over her shoulder.