The Voice on the Radio (16 page)

Any from Hannah? Reeve wanted to ask.

“Why don’t you just answer the phones?” suggested Derek. “Or you could study in the hall.”

Vinnie and Derek knew perfectly well that Reeve couldn’t stand it. His tiny, pathetic willpower would be gone. He’d seize the mike.

So he must not go.

On the other hand, here was his chance to field that hannah call. Everybody who listened knew the janies were Tuesday-Thursday. If there was to be another call, it would be tonight.

Reeve imagined the pause before the woman spoke. The rasping voice.

The heavy copper taste filled his mouth again.

If radio stations pay a lot for a decent jock, he thought, what would they pay for a guy who could draw a kidnapper out of thin air?

The image of himself, on talk shows across the nation, featured morning, evening and postmid-night, glistened like gold.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Reeve’s brilliant sister Megan looked solid and stunning.

His more brilliant sister Lizzie looked thin and stunning.

His slightly less brilliant brother, Todd, looked tan, joyful, proud, in love and of course not only stunning, but also equipped now with an equally stunning bride.

Nobody got around to asking Reeve whether he was stunning.

I have a stunning amount of willpower, he said silently, across the turkey and mashed potatoes (for Dad) and sweet potatoes (for Megan) and scalloped potatoes (for Todd) and brown rice (for Lizzie). My willpower has lasted me one entire week.

He gathered his willpower in his bare hands and walked next door to corner Janie in front of her parents.

The Johnsons had gone to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner.

Mrs. Johnson was regal, in very high heels, everything plum-colored: skirt, jacket, stockings. She looked beautiful, in a sixty-year-old way. Mr. Johnson wore the kind of suit Reeve associated with Wall Street, with a vest and a red bow tie that would have looked ridiculous on Reeve, and a cigar in his pocket. Reeve wanted a cigar conversation. How did they taste? Did Mrs. Johnson allow him to smoke it in the house? Would Mr. Johnson let Reeve try?

Mr. Johnson was laughing. “That’s a cigar look,” he said. “I know a cigar look when I see one.”

“And the answer, Reeve,” said Mrs. Johnson, “is no. Absolutely not. You may not begin smoking, you may not share a cigar, and in order to prevent cigar fantasies, you and Janie may go for a ride. Just be back in an hour because we have guests coming over.”

“Guests now?” said Reeve. “On Thanksgiving Day, but not for dinner?”

“That’s the best kind, the not for dinner kind,” said Mrs. Johnson. “They’re here for dessert and coffee.”

Janie had not said a single word, or looked at Reeve, either. But he had just been handed time alone with her. Thank you, Johnsons.

He turned. He faced her. She was expressionless. He fastened a smile on his face. She got her coat, got her mittens, got her scarf. There was going to be a lot of knitting between him and Janie.

In her driveway, divided from his own by a row of sorry-looking shrubs, Janie said, “I’m going with you only so I don’t have to make explanations to my parents.” She opened her door, got in and slammed it, before he could touch her or her door.

He drove down the old roads they used to love in high school: a view, a bridge, a sharp corner where he liked to leave a patch.

Janie said nothing.

In college, when they were apart, she had seemed so distant that she hardly seemed to exist. Now her presence consumed him. “Oh, Janie,” he said miserably.

She shrugged.

At the next stop sign, he looked at her. She was crying. “Janie, please don’t cry.”

“Just drive,” she said. “Don’t talk to me, don’t comfort me, don’t do anything but kill time until we can go home. I’m going to tell my parents you have a girlfriend in Boston, the distance was too much, you forgot me. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why you’re not going to call, fax, e-mail, or Hallmark-card me again. We’ve broken up.”

He actually felt broken.

He had known from the moment Brian called WSCK that this would happen, and yet he had refused to believe it.

It took him a few blocks to put his speech back together. “I don’t want to break up, Janie.”

She did not bother to respond.

“I’m going to quit college, Janie. It’s the only way to keep myself off the radio.”

“You loved it that much, selling me? The only way to quit the radio station is to quit college?”

He arranged his thoughts, which was not easy. Being with Janie disarranged every thought. He needed to explain the pressure on him; the anger of his friends; how he could not face that for three and a half more years.

Before he’d thought about it, he had put his hand on her mitten.

She ripped her hand away. “You’re nothing but a quitter anyhow, Reeve. Compared to your sisters and your brother, you’re nothing. How does it feel to be with them and see that? They’re trying to do good in the world, while you’re out there trying to destroy it. And then you don’t even have the guts to face it.”

He wanted to argue with each sentence, but he didn’t know how. “I just tried to fill airtime, Janie.”

“You could have thought ahead five minutes.”

He had thought ahead five minutes. Right up to the next janie.

He wanted to talk about the capital letter, but he could not imagine it. See, I reduced you; once I made you a lowercase letter, it was easy.

He’d put the heat on. Janie snapped it off, as if to prove she was stronger than car fixtures. She was blazing. He found her incredibly attractive. Her hair was flying up, flying out, taking control of the scarf, getting in her mouth, getting in her way.

“Janie,” he said, “could you consider my virtues instead of my vices?”

“No.” The rage was over, she was just sick of him. “Take us home, Reeve.”

“Janie, if I could turn the calendar back, I would. I’d go to football games instead.”

“But you didn’t, Reeve, and I don’t want to talk about what could have happened.”

“Janie, listen!” He yanked the car to the side of the road, leaving the signal on. She turned her back on him and looked out her window. “I was weak. I knuckled under. It was like being offered gold. And it
was
gold, Janie.
I was gold
. I never had success before. I never had people treat me like a celebrity. I knew I shouldn’t do it. I knew it wasn’t me, it was you. Your story, not my voice.”

He wanted her to turn. He wanted to see her eyes, wanted this audience, of all his audiences, to be live.

Janie did not move.

Barbie has Ken, thought Janie, and Ken is great, but Barbie doesn’t have an outfit that makes her into a Ken accessory. Barbie has a life. Or actually, dozens of lives.

I was planning to be a Reeve accessory. That way I wouldn’t have to have a life. I was going to lie out on the teak deck of our yacht, while he did the sailing. After all, if you run you own life, you might screw up. Like my parents with Hannah. Like Reeve with me.

That’s why I don’t even want a driver’s license. I wanted Reeve to drive.

She was only inches away from Reeve, but he wasn’t there; not her Reeve; and she missed him so much that she wept for him. She looked out the side window at the frozen ground and the fallen leaves, instead of across the Jeep at the person pretending to be Reeve.

Who’s pretending to be whom? she thought. I’m the only real life person I know who gets two lives and two names. I don’t want either of them. I want Reeve, the way I planned for him to be.

He had primed himself to use that terrible word
rape
, that awful knowledge he’d had, that his talk radio had been the rape of her soul. He could not utter the word. He could not stand the thought of himself in that role.

He said, “Janie, I love you, but I’m not a saint, any more than you are.” Out came the words he knew he should never say, just as the wrong words had continually come out on the air. “You were a brat to the Springs, Janie. You’re the one who made it so hard for everybody. I admit that I—”

“
I hate you. Don’t you compare us
. I was forced into the choices I made. Nobody forced you, Reeve. Don’t pretend you’re a victim. You
chose
your little golden opportunity. Don’t you dare tell me you love me. There is no love in what you did.”

He was pressed as hard against his window as she was against hers. “You’re right, there was no love in what I did, but I love you anyway.”

“I do not love you anyway. Take me home.”

He took her home.

When they reached their double driveway, he wanted to hold her in the car by force.
Make
her listen. He stopped himself. It would be proof that not only was he stupid, but he could get stupider.

On Friday Reeve watched from the window when Jodie and Brian pulled up at the Johnsons’, stayed an hour, and left with Janie. Exchanging Janie remained something the kids could do fairly easily and the parents could hardly do at all.

His sisters and brother and Heather had gone into New York City for the day. He wished he had gone. He found his parents and came out with it.

“Boston isn’t right for me,” Reeve told his parents. “I’ll finish the semester, and then I thought I’d come home and work for a while. Maybe go back to college next September. I saw an ad in the window at Dairy Mart, and I could probably—”

“
You get a job at Dairy Mart
,” said his father, “
making change for people buying a candy bar, and you might just as well lie down in the driveway and I’ll run over you until you’re part of the asphalt
.”

Reeve stared at his father.

“
You think we went through eighteen years of raising you so you could work at a convenience store
?”

“Well—”

“
Well, we didn’t. I don’t care how you feel about Boston. You’re staying in college
!”

Reeve felt as if he had skipped some really important part of life. His parents were mental cases. He had never expected this. In fact, he’d forgotten to think about his parents, he’d been so busy thinking about the janies or Janie and the hannahs or Hannah.

“
Are you failing
?” shouted his father. “
Are they going to kick you out anyway, is that what this is about
?”

He had no idea whether he was failing. It was a possibility.

“You quit,” said Reeve’s mother courteously, “and don’t come home thinking you’ll find free room and board here. You quit college and we’re done paying your bills.”

Reeve sank back in his chair. He tried to regroup. “Maybe I could transfer to a state university, which would be cheaper, and maybe—”

“
You finish your freshman year where you are
,” said his father.

Reeve wondered what Janie, Jodie and Brian were talking about on the drive to southern New Jersey. Scum Reeve, probably.

The only people who still liked him were people he hadn’t met yet.

“Is this about Janie?” his father asked, more calmly. “Are you so stuck on her that you can’t be separated?”