Stained

  “So what’s the difference between a boiled egg and a poached egg? What’s the difference between sunny-side up and sunny-side down?” the jocks ask.

  I can’t tell if they are laughing with me or at me. My armpits are sweating inside my uniform, and I wonder if Benny has confided in them. A week ago I would have said no way, he cares about me. But now that he’s told Father Warren everything there is to know, I can’t tell. Maybe they think I’m the next sure thing.

  It takes a long time to get their order.

  Joe sees this and comes over. He puts his arm around me and says, “This girl’s too good for you. You know that, don’t you?” He’s looking right at Benny.

  I’m dying. Wish Joe would walk away. Wish he wouldn’t move his finger up and down my neck. Wish I could disappear.

  “I know,” says Benny. Then he looks away. He seems genuinely pained.

  After lunch Linda says I need to go on break. “It’s the law,” she tells Joe. Then she tells me that I can take tomorrow off and every Wednesday hereafter.

  I walk over to Ray’s Market and use the pay phone to call the playhouse. Someone gets Theresa for me.

  “Can we go somewhere after work?” I ask. “Anywhere.”

  Theresa picks me up right on time. I have never been so happy to see her Beetle. She drives me home so I can change out of my uniform and lies on my bed, picking at the chenille on the spread while I change. I throw on some gym shorts and an old camp T-shirt.

  “Don’t wear that,” she says. “Let’s go somewhere nice.”

  “We don’t have anywhere nice to go.”

  “Let’s go over to the inn in Jefferson. I heard there’s a great guitar player there.”

  I give Theresa my “spill it” look. Clearly, someone in the summer theater group tipped her off to this guitar player. And if my guess is right, it isn’t the guitar player she’s interested in, but the one with the tip.

  “Come on, Jocelyn, give me a little credit. There’s more to life than hanging around with a bunch of small-town bums and drinking sloe gin fizzes.”

  I know she longs to be more sophisticated. I know that her family is more artsy than most in this town. But for some reason, I can’t let her off so easily.

  “So what are we going to do? Go to this inn and drink sloe gin fizzes?”

  “Not likely,” she says, ignoring my attempt at irony. “They’ll card us for sure. Let’s just go because it’s different.”

  I can give her that. I want different too. I change into a jean skirt and macramé vest, leave Mom a note, and we’re out of there.

  I’m glad that we’ve come. I feel older and wiser entering the pub. The waitress is really nice—acts like we’re adults when she brings us our Cokes. She and Theresa talk about the guitar player, whose name is Daniel. He’s pretty talented. He has a six-string and a twelve-string and goes back and forth between the two. Sometimes he plays classical music, sometimes folk songs. I like them both.

  There aren’t many people in the room, and at first it seems normal. We got there pretty early. But as the night goes on the room remains fairly empty. So after every song it’s just the two of us clapping and Daniel smiling back at us. Both Theresa and I start to feel self-conscious and silly—like we’re Daniel groupies or something.

  When he takes a break, we nod to each other and head out the front door. The night air is a cool pond. Theresa and I gulp. The air is free. We’re free. We giggle our way into the car.

  “So who didn’t show up?” I ask.

  Theresa smiles at me. “This kid who works on the sets. But that’s okay. I’ll see him tomorrow. Where do you want to go now?” She looks up in the mirror and flicks up the hair around her widow’s peak. I love the way her hair makes the top of a heart on her forehead, but it drives Theresa nuts.

  “We could go by Cumberland Farms.”

  “Why not.” Theresa says it in a slightly resigned voice. Kids from Jefferson hang out in front of the convenience store, and sometimes kids from Weaver Falls join them. Even Father Warren has been known to make a stop now and then. Theresa knows that I know there’s a smidgen of a chance that Benny will be there.

  But he’s not. Hardly anyone is.

  “I wonder where the party is tonight,” Theresa says.

  “Do you want anything?” I ask, getting out of the car to buy Canada Mints.

  “Two hunks, some excitement for a change. Think they have that inside?”

  “I doubt it. But look.” Theresa and I stare at the door as a girl our age, with a bag full of groceries and a carton of cigarettes, walks out.

  It’s Bernadette.

  I jump back in. “Quick! Follow her!” I yell.

  “Follow her?” Theresa’s confused, but she starts the car anyway. Bernadette gets into a beat-up old Buick and pulls out. We tail her, but not too closely.

  I expect the station wagon to turn down any one of the maple-lined streets in the center of Jefferson, but Bernadette drives right out of town. “Maybe she’s taking the groceries to Gabe,” I say. “Maybe the two of them are camping out in the woods.”

  “Do you think they would? Would they stay hidden with everyone looking for him like that?”

  “Maybe Gabe had a fight with his parents about Bernadette, and he said, ‘Screw you. I’ll be with her if I want to’ and took off.” I don’t tell Theresa that Gabe may have gotten a belt or a fist before leaving.

  “That doesn’t make sense, Jocelyn. Think about it. The O’Neils would hate for anyone to think that they are less than perfect. Why would they get everyone involved if they had even the tiniest inkling that Gabe is shacked up with Bernadette somewhere?”

  “You’re right about that,” I admit.

  We turn onto a steep winding road. I switch off the radio that’s playing a Beach Boys song. “California Girls” seems too obnoxious for this slow ascent. But without the music, the night is entirely too black, the road too deserted.

  “Hey,” I say. “Remember that story about the couple that goes parking? They make out, then the car won’t start, so the guy says he’ll go and get help. Remember?”

  Theresa looks at me as if I have two heads.

  “She locks all the doors and waits inside the car for an eternity. Then she hears this awful scratching on the roof. She screams, but no one hears her. In the morning help comes. She gets out of the car and discovers her boyfriend, stabbed, stretched out across the top.”

  Theresa flips the radio back on. “Jocelyn, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that we’re on this godforsaken road chasing a girl we don’t even know and you’re telling horror stories.”

  For some reason, I feel wired. Like I’ve had fifty cups of coffee. I don’t know why. But another story pops into my head to replace the first one. It’s a story I saw on a soap opera. Evil Girl is in love with Good Guy, but Good Guy has come to his senses and fallen in love with someone else. Only Evil Girl can’t let him go—she’s obsessed with having him. So she drugs Good Guy and keeps him hostage in a jail cell, where she cares for him.

  I start to ask Theresa if she watched this soap when she was younger, and if so, how does she think this woman built a jail cell? And does she think Bernadette could be keeping Gabe hostage? But she stops the car suddenly, before I can ask.

  I stare ahead.

  “She turned in there,” she says, pointing to a dirt driveway.

  “Come on, then,” I say, one hand on the door handle. “Let’s go check it out.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” says Theresa. “This is as far as I go.”

  “Some best friend,” I say.

  I can’t believe my own bravery. I pull my poncho on over my clothes. I don’t mind going alone. When it comes to Gabe, I’ve always made my own way.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Gabe’s family is having a big cookout in the backyard. We are celebrating Matt’s graduation from high school. The yard is filled with relatives—particularly cousins—and a bunch of seniors who don’t have family p
arties of their own to attend.

  Gabe is spinning a basketball on the tip of his finger. He is showing off for his cousin Jay, who is also twelve. Jay is taller than both of us, has curly brown hair, a flat nose, and eyes that take absolutely no notice of me.

  When the basketball spinning wears thin, Gabe challenges Jay to climb a tall tree near the river. You can tell that Jay, a Manchester boy, hasn’t had much practice in tree climbing. He’s more tough city kid than country jock. But he likes Gabe, admires him even, and hoists himself up—climbs pretty high. Gabe climbs to a branch just higher than the one Jay is perched on and yells down to me.

  “Go get me a rope, Jocelyn.”

  I know we don’t have a rope in our shed, so I wander into Gabe’s. The door lets in just enough light to make out the lawn mowers and rakes, fishing poles and tarps. On the wall is a coil of thick rope. I lift it off the spike, wrap it around my shoulder, and carry it back to the tree.

  “What the hell are you guys doing?” Mike yells.

  Gabe doesn’t bother to answer. He practically slides down the branches, grabs the rope, and shimmies back up.

  I hope that he’ll challenge me to climb with the rope, to join the two of them in the tree. But he doesn’t. This is a boy game. I’m the fetch girl.

  He ties one end of the rope around a large branch. Then he peels off his clothes to his shorts, carries the rope down and out to the branch that extends farthest across the river, gives a Tarzan call, and swings out over the water: a wide arc at first, then smaller. When the rope slows down, Gabe lets go. We watch the water splash up in the sunlight. Then he appears.

  I take my first breath since he took hold of the rope. But I am still frightened for him. We’ve been told to never swim in the river. It is filled with foamy chemicals from the mill in Jefferson. I imagine these chemicals creating gruesome, snakelike creatures that lurk beneath the rippled surface.

  “Get up here!” Mike shouts when Gabe walks up the riverbank.

  Gabe can’t stop grinning.

  “This is your brother’s party. Not yours. Do you always have to be the center of attention?” The crowd is silenced by Mike’s outburst.

  I am standing close enough to the grill to see the hurt, and then the anger, in Gabe’s eyes.

  “Come on, Gabe,” says Jay. He couldn’t care less about his uncle Mike.

  Gabe follows Jay to the dock. They stand on the boat dock, whipping each other with wet towels and laughing. Each slap strikes harder than the one before. Jay doesn’t seem to mind. He can dish it out too.

  Mom hands me a bowl of macaroni salad to take into the house. “Make yourself useful, Jocelyn. It’s getting dark.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I don’t know what I expected. A big house, tennis courts, Doberman pinschers racing out to meet me. But what I see when I reach the last twist in the driveway, which is really no bigger than a path, I’m totally unprepared for.

  Bernadette’s station wagon is parked next to other cars—beaten cars that haven’t run for a long time. In addition to cars, there’s a ton of other stuff: a bent baby-carriage frame, a rusty tricycle. In the corner of the clearing—you can’t really call it a yard—is a faded, torn, inflatable wading pool. Next to the pool is a dirty doll, its head cracked open.

  The house isn’t a house—it’s a basement. Apparently, someone was going to build a house but ran out of money Or decided that they would rather not pay property taxes. In New Hampshire you have to pay taxes only on a house, not on a foundation. So instead of building, they tar-papered a roof over the foundation—a flat roof that should have been a floor. The tar paper is peeling off.

  I am so astounded by what I see that it takes me a moment to realize I can see it. Bernadette flicks her headlights off and steps out of the car. She turns and looks right at me.

  “Who are you? Why are you following me?” This is bravery for other than moonlight, it’s dark.

  I realize that she can’t identify me while I’m on the driveway For a moment I think of running, just getting out of there. But I don’t.

  “It’s Jocelyn,” I say “From Joe’s Grill.”

  Her voice calms, but it doesn’t soften. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to see where you were going. I wondered if Gabe would be there.”

  Just then a deep voice bellows from the basement. “Bernadette, where are you? Who are you talking to?”

  A man staggers up from the bulkhead. He walks upright but tilted backward. Like a bear not used to walking on its hind legs. He’s enormous. “Is your mother home?” He slurs his words.

  “Not yet, Daddy. She’s still at work. I’m talking to a girlfriend. Just a girlfriend.”

  “Lemmee see your girlfriend.” He says it like she brought home some juicy treat.

  “I got your Winstons.” She walks over and hands her father the carton the way a mother would hand a baby a set of keys to keep it from pitching a tantrum. I try to imagine Bernadette living in this cellar with that man. I try to imagine the mother who will be returning home. I try to imagine Gabe visiting her here.

  The man takes the carton, bends over—seemingly to stop the world from spinning—and then heads back down.

  “Obviously, Gabe’s not here,” Bernadette says to me.

  Why “obviously”? I ask myself.

  I feel lost. I realize that all this time Gabe has been living a life completely apart from me. Our childhood games, our family get-togethers, our working together at the Grill have nothing, not a thing to do with who Gabe is and the life he now leads. I have no idea why he dates Bernadette. It seems to me that if it was just about sleeping with her, he’d have had a one-night stand. That it would have ended long ago. Did he talk to her father when he picked her up for dates?

  “Bernadette, there’s a pack missing from this carton!” the man yells.

  “They must have opened the carton at the store, Daddy. I’ll go back and get another pack for you later.” Bernadette takes the missing pack out of her peacoat pocket. “Want a cig?” she says.

  I remember Theresa in the car. She’s got to be worried by now. But, hell, she could have come with me, right? “Sure,” I say.

  Bernadette and I sit up on a boulder. She lights two cigarettes and hands one to me. I actually think the taste of cigarettes, especially the no-menthol ones, is disgusting. But I do what Theresa and I have been practicing. I take a drag and puff out some smoke rings. It’s a cool little trick when you can’t stand the feel of smoke in your lungs.

  “I can’t wait to get out of here,” Bernadette says. “As soon as I finish school, I’m getting a job, renting a place, and moving my mother out.”

  “Does your mother want to leave?”

  “She thinks she has nowhere else to go. But that’s not true. She could go far, if she believed in herself.”

  I really admire Bernadette at this moment, and I want to tell her, but I’m too chicken. “You must be worried sick about Gabe,” I say instead.

  I feel her shrug. “I miss talking to him.”

  It doesn’t feel like a complete answer. “Do you love him?” I ask, and immediately wish I could take it back. What a stupid thing to say. I’ve never even asked Theresa if she’s loved someone—not in the way I mean now.

  She takes a long drag on her cigarette. She’s decided to ignore the question, I think. But she hasn’t.

  “No one gets me and Gabe. They think they do—they think they know all about us. But they don’t know the first thing.”

  “Like what?”

  I can see her debating with herself—it’s written all over her face: Should I tell her or not? “Well, I’m a virgin, for one thing.”

  “You are?” I wish I could have prevented my amazement from showing.

  I think that she’s going to say more, but she doesn’t. She has no need to explain things to me.

  “My friend’s back on the road,” I say, stamping out my butt. “I better go.” For some reason, I don’t want Theres
a to come down this driveway. How Bernadette is seen in Weaver Falls is her choice. I want to keep it that way.

  “I’ll walk you out,” she says. It’s clear that Bernadette would rather be anywhere than back in that cellar. As we approach the end of the driveway she backs away from me.

  I reach out for the car door handle and ask, “Where do you think Gabe is?”

  “At confession.” She throws down the cigarette and taps it out with her Timberlands, expensive shit-kickers. She sees me staring at her boots.

  “Gabe bought them.”

  “Where do you think he is?”

  “Get in, Jocelyn.” Theresa’s had it.

  I stand there. I want to know what Bernadette means.

  “Ask Father Warren,” she says. Then she turns to walk back.

  “Hey!” I hear just as I’m getting into the car. I pop back out.

  “I do,” she calls.

  It makes no sense to me.

  “Love Gabe,” she says. “But not the way you do.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Gabe and I have been on summer vacation long enough to be bored, wishing that something would happen.

  We’re picking blackberries, stuffing them into our mouths and bickering over whose property they grow on. Gabe tells me his father planted these berries. I tell him he’s wrong, that my grandfather said they were growing here back when he built this house for him and Grandma. My grandmother used to make blackberry jam.

  Gabe pegs a blackberry at me.

  I peg one back, but I’m a terrible aim. I try again. I miss.

  “Want to go down to the brook?” I say. I am not sure what Gabe will say. It is one thing for us to be talking on the borders of our property. It is another to actually do something together in a public place. Gabe thinks for a minute. “Okay. But you have to keep this a secret.”

  At first I think that he wants to keep it a secret from Anna. They are going together, and she may not like the fact that he spends time with me. Then I think that he probably wants to keep this day a secret from everybody. Kids would never stop teasing him if they learned he’d spent the day with Cootie Girl. So I promise him that no one else will know.