A Face in Every Window

  "O'Brien, why don't you come by when Larry comes? Man, I haven't seen you in ages."

  "Not since we moved," I said.

  "Right. So hitch a ride."

  "I don't know," I said, trying to think up a reason not to go. I thought I'd like to see Tim, see for myself if he'd really changed as much as I thought he had, or if there was still some connection between us. I needed a friend. I needed my old friend to talk to. I thought about unloading all the stuff that had been going on, the way he had always done with me, and although the idea was really tempting, I didn't want to ride in a car alone with Larry and Ben. Not that I thought they'd attack me or anything. I just didn't like the way they made me feel when I was around them. I felt weird and embarrassed.

  "I think I've got a big test to study for." I tried to laugh. "You know me, gotta be class valedictorian next year. I got a B on a history test. I bet—"

  "Right, just thought I'd ask. Save the excuses, O'Brien. I thought we were friends. Fact is, I thought I could talk to you about something."

  I hesitated and then said, "Okay, sure, I'll be there. Yeah, I want to come. I've got some stuff to tell you, too."

  "Good, then see you on Saturday. We'll play a little football or something. It'll be great."

  ***

  SATURDAY DIDN'T START out great, however. First, when Ben, Larry, and I went down to the cabin to fetch the table, Larry inspected it one more time and found a nick on the corner where I had fallen against it the night he punched me. He had a fit about it and looked at me as if it were all my fault, and I said, "You were the one who punched me, remember?"

  Ben tried to calm him down by rubbing his back and saying soothing words.

  "Oh, please, don't make me puke," I said, turning away from the two of them. How had I gone so long without noticing how queer they acted? Susan was right, I had to be blind not to have noticed. They wore matching earrings, even, and Larry had dyed his hair a lemon color to match Ben's.

  Larry sanded the teeny-tiny nick and stained it and then, at last, we loaded it onto the roof of the van. We had blankets set on top of the van, blankets wrapped around the table, and blankets on top of the table, all tied with thick ropes and knotted inside the van so that I couldn't close the doors all the way. We had to tie the doors as closed as we could get them after we had climbed inside. I sat in the back, in charge of watching the knots to see they didn't loosen around the table, and Larry and Ben sat up front.

  Ben drove the van and Larry sat in the passenger seat, moaning and whining and saying every minute or so, "Maybe we should just turn around. I'm not ready."

  "Sure you are." Ben patted his hand, and I rolled my eyes. "Look, you've got your act together," he continued. "You've got a steady job, right? You know what you want. Don't let your parents mess you up. Your father's got to be pleased with the table."

  Despite Ben's encouragement, Larry got more nervous the closer we got to the old neighborhood. I could see sweat beading up on the side of his face every time he turned to look at Ben for reassurance. Even with the doors open some, it had begun to stink inside the van. It smelled like stinkin' fear, and I had to admit, I felt a little sorry for Larry. He kept shifting in his seat, clearing his throat, pulling his hair back in a ponytail, and taking it out again.

  Just as we approached the entrance to the neighborhood, Larry said, "Stop! Stop the car."

  Ben slammed on the brakes, and the driver behind us gave us the finger as he drove past.

  Larry jumped out of the car and ran to the side of the road toward the creek. He disappeared behind the O'Learys' house and Ben nodded. "He's sick to his stomach. I told him he shouldn't have had that orange sauce."

  "What orange sauce? My orange sauce?" I asked.

  "What?" Ben twisted around to face me. "Yeah, that sauce you showed him, and the pancakes. He loves the stuff. You're a good cook, O'Brien. He says his don't taste the same as yours."

  I shrugged. "I just follow my grandmother's old recipes."

  Ben turned back around and watched out the window for Larry and so did I.

  "I don't think science was Larry's favorite subject," Ben said. "What does 'two eggs, separated' mean, anyway?"

  I laughed. "Tell me he didn't take two eggs and put them in separate bowls."

  "I don't know. I didn't watch."

  I sat back in my seat. "I grew up watching my grandmother cook. I guess that's the difference."

  "You're a natural." Ben nodded.

  It had to be the nicest thing he'd ever said to me. I guessed he was forgetting to be mean because he felt worried about Larry.

  "Where the hell is he?" he asked, resting his head on the window.

  "Maybe he decided to drown himself in the creek," I said.

  "Don't even joke." Ben unlocked his door and was about to get out when Larry came jogging back toward the van.

  He hopped in all out of breath and said, "Okay, ready."

  "We thought you'd drowned," Ben said.

  "Nah," Larry cleared his throat. "Thought about it, though."

  Ben patted his hand and started up the car.

  It felt strange coming into the old neighborhood. Some of the houses had been painted, some looked the worse for wear, and they all looked smaller, much smaller than I'd remembered.

  Our house had been repainted. We had left it white, but the new family had painted it a dull salmon color. "There ought to be a law," I said when we passed it, and Ben chuckled.

  When we pulled up to the Seeleys' house, Larry said under his breath, "Help me, Lord," and I found my own heart beating a little faster. I busied myself with the knots, first the ones on the doors and then the ones across the ceiling above me. While we were lowering the table off the roof, Tim and Mr. and Mrs. Seeley came out of the house and stood on their steps, watching.

  "What in the world?" Mrs. Seeley said when we turned the table right side up and began unwrapping it.

  "Come see for yourself," Larry said. He brushed his hair back off his face with his fingers and blew out his breath.

  Tim jogged ahead of his parents and gave Larry a pat on the back. "Good to see you, Larry."

  "Real good to see you, kiddo," he said. I saw tears in his eyes, and I looked down at the table and pretended to brush some sawdust off the top.

  Larry turned to his mother, who had come up behind him, and he hugged her, then shook his father's hand. "Hi, Dad," he said, and cleared his throat.

  Then everyone said hi to me, with Mrs. Seeley hugging me, and Mr. Seeley slapping my back and asking me about basketball season. Then Mr. Seeley nodded at Ben and, eyeing the table, said, "So what have we here?"

  Larry twisted around to Ben. "Oh, sorry, this—this is my friend Ben, here. He's my friend."

  Mr. Seeley took one of his hands out of his pocket and pointed at the table. "I meant the table. What's this for?"

  "It's for you." Larry looked around. "It's for all of you. I made it. I made it all myself. See, I'm thinking of going—"

  "We've already got a table, Larry. I bought it twenty years ago, and it's still as sturdy as the day I got it," Mr. Seeley said. He stepped forward and tried to jiggle the table.

  Larry glanced at Ben, then back at the group. I could tell he wanted to cry. His face had turned red about the cheeks and forehead, but around his eyes and mouth he'd gone dead white. He kept blinking and rubbing his sweaty palms on his thighs. I looked down at the ground and kicked at one of the blankets.

  "It's wonderful, Larry. Sturdy as can be," Mrs. Seeley said, running her hand over the top. "Just real nice."

  Mr. Seeley nodded. "Yeah, real sturdy, but where we gonna put it?"

  Tim nudged me and said, "So come on, let's go to the creek."

  I followed him across the street and around the Polanskis' house toward the creek. Before we got out of hearing range, I heard Larry say, "Ben's an ex-football player from Doylestown, Dad."

  When we got to the creek, Tim and I stood at the edge of the bank and looked into the water. "Still
the same old creek," I said, watching the water spill over the rocks, clear, clean-looking water with streams of sunlight running through it.

  "Still the same old everything," Seeley said, his hands on his hips.

  I turned to him. "No, you're different You lifting weights?"

  "Yeah, I stay in shape. So, what's it like living up in New Hope?"

  "Come see for yourself sometime."

  Seeley picked up an acorn and pitched it into the water. We watched it ride the flow, then disappear beneath the surface.

  "No offense, but it's not exactly my kind of crowd—Larry and Bobbi and all."

  "I thought you liked Bobbi. She said you did."

  Seeley shrugged. "I heard you've got a whole house full of weirdos, huh?"

  I sat down on the ground and Seeley joined me. We stretched our legs out toward the bank and automatically started moving our feet side to side, heels planted. It was something we used to do as kids. If we started moving our feet in the same direction it meant we were in agreement, but if one started left and the other right it meant we were in disagreement My feet knocked against his and we stopped.

  "Man, word sure travels," I said. "Who told you about everybody?"

  "Bobbi, over the holidays. Remember? She came home?"

  "She called us weirdos?"

  Seeley sat up and crossed his legs. "No, but I do. Reading poetry—give me a break—and sleeping on top of each other and shooting baskets at midnight—well, that's cool, except Larry and someone else are wearing those queer mime costumes."

  I nodded, laughing. "Yeah, Ben, the guy you just met"

  "Bobbi said she sleeps in a sleeping bag on a raft"

  I nodded again and remembered the night I slept with some of the others in the cabin, sharing blankets and pillows. "It's not so bad," I said, surprising myself.

  "Right, and roasting weenies outside on Christmas Eve—just your average American family." Seeley kicked my leg. "Good old Pap."

  I laughed. "Pap's plants are taking over the place. He takes them into the parlor and plays the piano for them. I mean he bangs on the piano for them. What's amazing is that the things grow like crazy. I think Mam must sneak around at night feeding the plants some secret formula or something." Seeley shook his head. "Poetry." "It's not so bad," I said again. "They're getting better. One girl, Jerusha, is really good, I think. She's less showy with hers. And she plays the cello like nothing you've ever heard. She could be a professional."

  I thought of tall, skinny Jerusha, with her big eyes and her hoarse voice. I thought of her playing the cello, her movements as she played, her hair quivering and swinging to the music. I thought of the men's suits and the Disney ties she wore, and I missed her. I missed the way she sat with the group but apart from it, too, watching, listening, putting in her two cents' worth only after everyone else had spoken, and always using logic and compassion. I thought that had to be a rare combination, logic and compassion. The rest of them just used passion. All of them acted out of passion, without thinking things through.

  "What are you smiling at, doofus-face?" Seeley cut into my thoughts.

  "I was just thinking about Jerusha. She's nice."

  "Great body, eh?" Seeley nodded and pulled at the grass by his feet.

  "Great person," I said.

  Seeley sniffed or snickered, I couldn't tell which, and we fell silent for a minute or two. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the water spilling over the rocks. I inched closer to the bank and listened again. With my eyes closed, it felt as if the water were flowing right through me. I could hear the sound of the rushing water on my right and a separate sound on my left, softer, more babbling, and it all passed through me, as if I absorbed some of the sound and passed the rest on; as if I were water, too, a part of the creek. I wanted to capture this feeling, think about it, think about being a part of the flow of things. I knew there was something in it, some neat idea about chaos and flow, but Seeley broke into my thoughts and I knew he wouldn't understand if I shushed him.

  "So who's this Ben guy Larry brought with him?" he asked.

  "You really want to know?" I kept my eyes closed, listening half to the water, half to him.

  "I knew it!" I heard Tim get to his feet. "That idiot's going to make one of his famous announcements, isn't he?"

  I opened my eyes and stood up, too. "Yeah, why? What?"

  "What is it? What's he going to tell Mom and Dad this time? As if I didn't know."

  "Well, if you guessed that Ben's his boyfriend, as in love interest, as in little cupcake, then you guessed right"

  Seeley staggered backward as if I'd just given him a blow to the head, and I felt bad, first for Seeley, for how stricken he looked, as if he hadn't guessed at all—but also for Larry and Ben. I felt as if I was betraying them, telling their secret and saying it in that way, making fun of them. It was a secret that belonged to them, to the house in New Hope, our house.

  I felt in that instant that we had come there as a team, Larry, Ben, and 1.1 was surprised by this thought, surprised by all the thoughts that had come to me that afternoon. I realized we weren't just a team, we were a family. We were part of that large and strange family that came from that farmhouse on the hill, and I had told a family secret that should have stayed on the hill until Larry and Ben decided to tell it.

  "Dad's going to piss steam!" Seeley said, still reeling. "He's going to blow a gasket! That idiot! That loser! It figures. We all knew he was coming back for something. He never just visits. That stupid table of his. What's that supposed to be, his peace offering? That piece of junk!"

  "Hey! If anyone in your family had bothered to notice, or had any aesthetic sense at all, they would have seen that that piece of junk is a work of art."

  "Listen to you! Next you'll be telling me you're a homo."

  "Me? Listen to you! You're freaking out like it's the end of the world."

  Tim punched his fist into the oak tree beside him. "What a loser!"

  "Why don't you just cool it with the loser stuff. Larry's only a loser when he's here, when he's around you guys. He cooks our dinners, plans our meals, everything. He writes poetry. He even has one real good one about the Waste Land. He's smart, Seeley. He taught himself—"

  "Shut up! Just shut up! Okay?" Seeley slapped the tree. "You don't get it. You don't get it at all."

  "So fill me in, and don't tell me to shut up."

  "Dad's going to explode."

  "You think he'll hit Larry, or what?" I asked, still not understanding why Seeley was in such a rage.

  "Try a heart attack. Dad had a stroke about a month ago. He's on all this medication for high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Just fifty-one years old. We're not supposed to upset him, but nowadays every little thing upsets him."

  "So what are we doing standing here? Let's go stop Larry," I said.

  Seeley pounded the tree one more time and took off. I ran behind him, but I could tell as soon as I rounded the front of the Polanskis' house that Larry had already broken the news to his parents about Ben and him.

  Mr. Seeley stood on the front stoop, waving his newspaper at them and bellowing something about how all faggots should be shot, while Mrs. Seeley pulled on his arm and tried to calm him. Larry and Ben were in the van, tying down the table, and in their hurry, getting their hands all tangled up in it. I jumped in the back with them and said, "I'll do it You guys just drive."

  Ben didn't need any more direction. He squeezed into the front seat, started up the car, and we took off, doors swinging wide open, Larry flying forward against the front seat, and me holding on for dear life to the rope above my head.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  WE SPED DOWN the street and into the McDonald's parking lot across from the neighborhood. Ben stopped the van and I secured the table and tied up the doors. We didn't say much, and when we got going again we didn't say anything for the longest time. Larry sat with his body leaning up against the door, his head resting on the window. Every once in a
while I'd hear him sniff, but from where I sat behind him I couldn't tell if he was crying or not Ben reached over and touched his leg now and then, and Larry would nod to him, but they didn't speak.

  I sat back in my seat and thought about Tim and the rest of the Seeley family, how they wouldn't give Larry a chance, how they couldn't see past old history. Then I thought about what Jerusha had said the night in the cabin, that we were all just trying to find our way, and that our house was like a great incubator. At the time I thought she made us all sound as if we were some kind of prisoners of the dark who couldn't see what was right in front of us. I'd known I wasn't like that. I could see all too plainly. It was everyone else who was blind.

  Then, riding in the van that afternoon with Larry and Ben, I realized that I was just trying to find my way, too. I had believed the chaos tumbled all around me, that it didn't touch me, because I wouldn't let it. I was the only thing stable, unchanging. I believed that I could hold myself to my ideas, hold on; but just by spending that brief time with Tim, I realized I too had changed, the molecules had shifted and rearranged themselves inside me without my noticing it. I didn't belong in that neighborhood anymore. I had outgrown my past, just as Larry had outgrown his. I still wasn't exactly on Larry and Ben's side, but I knew I couldn't be on Mr. Seeley's side, either. I thought maybe there didn't have to be sides. Maybe I could just learn to care about Larry without making a judgment either way—maybe.

  I leaned forward and tapped Larry's shoulder. "Sorry," I said.

  Larry lifted his head.

  "Really," I said. "I'm really sorry."

  He nodded and lowered his head again.

  Larry, Ben, and I lugged the table back to the cabin when we got home, and then Larry said he wanted to be left alone for a while. Ben and I closed the cabin door behind us and left him standing over his table, his hands dug into the pocket of his jeans.

  That night I helped Larry and Pap prepare dinner. I sang "I've Been Working on the Railroad" along with Pap while he kneaded his bread, and Larry kept to the dinner preparations, smoking his cigarettes, saying little, deep in thought.