Closer All the Time Page 4

  After the tables were cleared and they’d recited the Pledge of Allegiance, a band began playing at one end of the AMVETS hall. That brought many of the grown-ups onto the dance floor, snapping their fingers and nodding their heads. Tomi sat up straight, so no one would think she was tired. She didn’t want to miss anything. She especially wouldn’t have wanted to miss it when Johnny Lunden came in, laughing and going from table to table, shaking hands and slapping backs. She wouldn’t have wanted to miss him cutting a rug with one lady after another, either.

  All the ladies seemed to think it was fun.

  After one dance Johnny looked around the room and his eyes settled on Tomi. When she waved he came walking over.

  “Lieutenant?” he said to her father. “With your permission?”

  Then he bowed to Tomi. “May I have the honor of this dance, Miss Tomi-salami?”

  “I can’t dance!” Tomi laughed.

  “Of course you can,” Johnny Lunden said.

  Tomi looked at her mother, and when she said, “Go ahead, honey,” she took Johnny’s hand and let him lead her onto the dance floor. It made her nervous, but then he held both of her hands very gently and she felt better. When the music began he winked and said, “Just do what I do, kiddo.” He made a cross-step, and repeated the move the other way. Tomi followed, watching his legs, but it was hard to imitate him exactly because he was so much taller. He showed her how to skip sideways, still holding hands, and how to let go of one hand and spin under the other one. Then he dropped his arms straight down and sort of jogged in place, jutting his chin forward and back. Tomi laughed too hard to do this very well, and he went back to the sideways skip, arranging it so that when the song ended, they were right back where they’d started.

  Johnny pulled out Tomi’s chair, then said, “One more favor, Lieutenant?” and held out a hand to her mother.

  “Oh, Johnny,” Tomi’s mother laughed. “Haven’t you had enough?”

  “For old times’ sake.” Johnny Lunden looked at the stage and snapped his fingers. He twitched his shoulders, wagged his head. He grinned at Tomi’s mother and said, “Come on, let’s shake a leg. The lieutenant won’t mind.”

  Tomi’s mother looked helplessly at Tomi’s father.

  “Suit yourself,” Tomi’s father said.

  Tomi’s mother said, “All right, one dance!” and when Johnny Lunden started her toward the floor, she looked over her shoulder and said, “I’ll be right back!”

  Tomi’s father gave a little wave.

  Tomi sat up even straighter. Her mother and Johnny Lunden walked to the middle of the floor. Tomi’s mother leaned back and looked at him. Then they started in dancing. Tomi’s mother smiled with her chin up as he turned her to one side, pulled her back, and twirled her around.

  Then they really took off. Tomi liked how he was all quick steps and slapping feet, but his head hardly moved at all. She liked how her mother had no trouble keeping up. Her mother was a great dancer! The two of them strutted and high-stepped and whirled until almost all the other dancers pulled back to give them extra room. Some even cheered and clapped. Only Alva Potter and his wife were able to keep up, and finally they stopped, too. When the song ended, Tomi’s mother and Johnny Lunden stayed put, and it wasn’t until three dances later that he finally brought her back to the table.

  Tomi thought she looked very pretty with her face all flushed.

  “You’ve still got it, Susie!” Johnny Lunden said. He winked at Tomi, formally saluted her father, and walked off, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief and stuffing it into his hip pocket. He walked all the way across the hall and then disappeared through a side door.

  “Time for another drink,” Tomi’s father said.

  “Don’t be mean,” Tomi’s mother said. She was still catching her breath.

  “Maybe he’ll ask you to dance again.”

  “You said it was all right, honey.”

  “Not exactly,” Tomi’s father said.

  When Johnny Lunden came back in through the same door a few minutes later, Tomi watched to see if he’d pick up where he’d left off, and wondered if he’d ask her to dance again. But this time he just sat at a table by himself and watched. A few dances later the band announced a break, and then Tomi’s father shoved his chair back and said, “Are we ready?”

  They got up and walked to the door under the red exit sign. During the ride home Tomi sat quietly in the backseat, watching her parents. But they kept their eyes on the road and didn’t talk.

  Tomi said good night, ran upstairs, and counted to fifty. Then she tiptoed back down and ducked into the coat closet. She opened the door a fraction to listen. Her father was doing most of the talking, but it was one of those times when Tomi couldn’t quite hear. When he came out and marched up the stairs, though, she could tell he wasn’t very happy.

  She waited until he returned—in his bathrobe, now—and when the discussion resumed, she slipped out of the closet and stole upstairs herself. The stepladder was still in place, and in a flash she was back in the attic, looking for the photo with all the friends in uniform. She found it and—just as she’d thought—one of them was Johnny Lunden, standing next to Philip Metcalf, leaning on his shoulder with a big smile on his face. You could tell it was him, even without a mustache.

  Tomi flipped to the dance photos. They were even better now that she’d actually seen her mother shake a leg. She imagined her mother dancing with Philip Metcalf the way she’d danced with Johnny Lunden, and the idea drew her in so deeply that when the stepladder rattled, it barely registered. Then it rattled again and Tomi knew suddenly it was her mother—too light to make the stairs creak—coming to put her nurse’s uniform away.

  Tomi put the top back on the shoe box and slipped over to hide behind the chimney. It was all she could think of to do. She made herself as small as possible and hunkered there against the wall, watching her mother climb through the hatch with the nurse’s uniform over her arm.

  Her mother stood under the bare bulb, then set off across the plank. On the other side she hooked her uniform up, stepped back, and clasped her hands in front of her. For a moment she stood still, looking at the uniforms. Then, so suddenly that Tomi caught her breath, she tipped her head, pivoted lightly, and began to dance, right there in the attic! She held one hand high and tucked the other around the waist of an invisible partner and twirled gracefully over the plywood, coming so close at one point that Tomi thought for sure she’d be discovered. But her mother only spiraled back the way she’d come, stopping in front of the uniforms again to curtsy.

  Tomi’s mother straightened and stood looking as before. Then she covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders trembled as if she might be crying, but in the weak light it was hard for Tomi to be sure.

  Tomi kept an eye on her while carefully shifting position. She’d been dying to move, because her legs were hurting like the dickens again. Not just her legs, actually; it seemed to be spreading. She’d thought at first it was just another growing pain, showing up at exactly the wrong time, but now she was starting to wonder. She wondered if it might be that other stuff her mother had warned her about instead, that becoming-a-woman stuff. She certainly hoped that wasn’t it, though.

  Settled cross-legged now, watching her mother and aching in several new ways, Tomi didn’t feel nearly ready to become a woman.

  Mark

  Mark Mitchell was fourteen, and not ordinarily one to volunteer for household chores, but on this day when his father went outside to smoke his pipe and the other four kids vamoosed into the living room, he lingered in the kitchen to help his mother clear the table. While she carried the big serving dish over, he stacked dirty plates and listened to the collies yip and howl from the dog pen. It always riled them up when someone went outside. The big boy collie they called Mr. Man usually started in, and that set the rest of them off.

  When Mark carried the plates over, his mother looked at him in surprise.

  “Why, thank you, Mark
,” she said.

  Mark shrugged and lowered the plates into the sink.

  “You’re still my good boy.” His mother tried to kiss his cheek, rolled her eyes when he ducked away. “Well, you are,” she said, and scraped a plate into the dog pan on the counter.

  At the table, Mark arranged eight glasses into two clusters and picked them up with his fingertips. When they clinked he looked at his mother. She’d heard it and was staring his way.

  “Please don’t carry them like that,” his mother said.

  Mark held the glasses out. “It’s all right, see?”

  “I asked you not to.”

  “But it’s quicker.” Mark walked carefully toward her.

  “Mark!”

  “I can’t stop now.” He lowered them safely into the sink and with his mother’s eyes still on him, turned and walked with a sort of flinty dignity into the living room. All the good places there were occupied, as he’d known they would be. He’d counted on it, in fact. He sat on the floor near the box that held the latest litter, drew his knees up, and looked at Mindy with her six tugging and pushing puppies. Mindy was his mother’s prize bitch.

  “Good girl,” he said, and patted her. She let her head back down and he touched the puppies. They were taut and hungry and squirmed under his hand.

  “I beat you!” his little brother Ricky taunted from the couch, where he was squeezed against the near arm by Linda and Julie.

  “I let you,” Mark said coolly.

  “Did not!”

  “Shut up.”

  “That’s enough,” Mark’s father said from the doorway. He came walking in, the smell of pipe smoke clinging to his flannel shirt. “Any more bickering and we’ll just leave the TV off.”

  “No!” the kids on the couch cried.

  “Mark?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “All right, then.” Mark’s father looked into the hallway. “Lois?”

  Mark’s mother came in, wiping her hands on her apron, giving Mark a look that meant she was still put out. Mark’s father switched the light off—the room going dusky—and turned the television on. Then he backed up to the sofa where their mother already roosted, hands in her lap. Everybody stared as the screen brightened into five animated panels and the orchestrated theme of their favorite show began. When the panels came to life, a cartoon cowboy in the center lit a cigarette, tossed the match away, and wheeled just in time to karate-chop an armed bandit backing out of a saloon. Quickly he then dealt with trouble in two other panels—a gambler trying to cheat at cards, a gunman raising his pistol—and finally he disarmed, with a kiss, a beautiful, knife-wielding lady in a big hoop skirt. As she slumped against the panel wall, the knife rattling from her slack fingers, the cowboy sauntered off into the distance, lighting another smoke while the opening credits rolled.

  Mark waited until after the first commercial break, when the drama resumed with the cowboy hero seemingly doomed by the actions of a demented, evil dwarf. When the tension reached its peak, he crawled noiselessly past the end of the couch into the hallway. There he stood up and listened. They’d probably just think he was going to the bathroom anyway, but there was no sense in being careless.

  Mark gave a dismissive salute and sauntered dangerously through the kitchen to the shed and outside into the evening. It was warm and moonless, with dozens of stars clustered against the black sky. He changed to an Indian-scout gait—toes pointed in—and stole between the tall elms that flanked the driveway. It seemed to him he was moving silently, but Mr. Man detected him nonetheless, and let out a series of short, sharp barks. Then the rest of the collies began barking and howling.

  Mark ran across the Baxter River Road to the dirt road that led down to the woods and through to the river. The dogs howled louder and he sped toward his grandparents’ house. His plan was to circle the house to the crab-apple grove, to hide there and lob crab apples onto the flat roof of his aunt Carolyn’s at the bottom of the hill. This was to pay back his cousin Arnold Stimpson, who at noon recess that day had belted him in the stomach so hard that Mark had collapsed onto the ground, gasping. Arnold had hulked off without a word, but Mark had known exactly what it was for: Arnold had called a meeting of the Wolf Club on the way to school, and Mark, vice president of the club, had spent recess with Daryl Sleeper instead of attending.

  Mark hadn’t tattled afterwards, like a little kid would have.

  He was going to pay Arnold back on his own.

  Mark stole past his grandparents’ screened porch, dogtrotted around the garage and past the rain barrel that held his grandfather’s outboard. He brushed through their clothesline, tangled momentarily in a pair of damp overalls, and ran into the grove. The living-room window in his aunt’s little house flickered with pale light. Mark knew they’d be watching the cowboy show, too. He imagined his cousin running outside, stomping around in the dark without finding Mark, going back in to have the show mostly over. It made him smirk triumphantly to himself.

  Mark prowled around the grove until he found a site with a clear shot toward the house and a nearby lilac bush for cover. Then he picked up a couple of small, misshapen crab apples and made sure his throwing motion would clear the branches. He drew back his right arm, imagined the lumpy little apple arcing toward Arnold’s roof. He felt his muscles tighten.

  But then he couldn’t do it.

  Arnold would come running outside all right, but he’d either catch Mark tonight or settle with him tomorrow. He wasn’t one to let anything go. And Mark didn’t want to be slugged again.

  He dropped the apples, ran past the clothesline and out the driveway, growling his disappointment. He turned the opposite way from his house and ran down the dirt road, looking ahead at a stand of dead trees where the road curved left. It was swampy in there, and this had choked the young trees; now they stood stiff and bare against the black sky.

  On the right was Mrs. Carey’s house, where Daryl Sleeper and his sister, Karin, lived. Mrs. Carey was their grandmother, and they were staying with her until their divorced parents, who lived in Portland, figured out how to share them properly. Mark had known them for several months now, and had come to the conclusion that Portland kids were just different. Daryl, for instance, combed his hair straight back so that it lay in parallel lines. He winked, too, and used such foul language that at first Mark would have to think a quick Hail Mary every few minutes. He was more used to it now, though.

  Daryl’s sister, a grade behind them, was very pretty with mysterious smudges under her eyes, but she was just as odd. Mark remembered how they’d been playing with Daryl’s models one day and she’d opened the door and looked in. She’d never said a word, just let her tongue tap against her braces. Then she’d shut the door and left.

  “I think she wanted to come in,” Mark said after she’d left.

  “No shit, Sherlock.” It was one of Daryl’s favorite things to say.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Mark said offhandedly.

  “Naw, she’s crazy,” Daryl said. “C’mon, let’s go in the garage.”

  Daryl had a trumpet and a saxophone and a drum set in Mrs. Carey’s garage and could play them all. Like Mark, he’d been taking music lessons after school, which is how they’d become friends. For a week now Daryl had been his best friend—secretly, so Arnold wouldn’t find out—although a big part of it was Karin. When she stared at him it made him nervous in a way that he was really starting to like.

  Mark jumped over the grassy ditch, crossed the lawn, and tapped on Daryl’s yellow-lit window. There was a thump and footsteps and then Daryl eased the shade up. His hair looked freshly combed, the lines slightly wavy, like a plowed field. He held a finger against his lips, went back to his bed. He returned and pushed the window up, freezing when it rasped. While they held still there was another noise, something moving quickly off through the bushes on the other side of the road.

  “What’s that?” Mark whispered.

  “Just a little pussy!” Daryl hissed back. He
smothered a laugh, clambered out the window, and pulled it almost all the way shut. Then he showed Mark what he’d brought—a long, silver flashlight and his sneakers—and they ran across the road.

  Daryl sat on a stump and pulled his sneakers on. He stood up. “Come on!”

  “Where?” Mark said.

  “Old Captain Lambert’s cabin!”

  Daryl took off, with Mark close behind. They sprinted around the curve past the swamp and the dead trees and turned onto an old logging road. The road was grown up, and they had to push scratchy brush aside to enter. Daryl turned the flashlight on and they followed its column of light through the woods, up a long hill to the old, abandoned cabin, which sat near the edge of a bluff overlooking the Baxter River. They walked over to the bluff and looked down at the lazy water. Then they went back to the cabin.

  Mark had been up here several times before.

  Once, he and Arnold had collected dead wood and started a fire in the crumbly old stone fireplace. But the chimney was blocked; flames had licked out and the cabin had filled with smoke. They’d burst out, through the front door and had run off through the woods, stopping by their grandparents’ to look back, certain the place would burn to the ground. Which it probably would have, if Roger Lambert hadn’t seen the smoke from the airstrip and come hitching across the old wood road with a fire extinguisher.

  When they’d snuck back a week later there were scorch marks on the wooden mantel and blackened rocks around the fireplace, but the cabin was still standing. That was the last time he’d been back, because they’d heard that Mr. Lambert was trying to find out who’d nearly destroyed his great-grandfather’s cabin, and Mr. Lambert was a little scary sometimes.

  Daryl’s flashlight played over the boarded-up front door and windows. They walked around to the other side of the cabin and Daryl knelt by a cellar window and worked the loose frame out of the foundation with his jackknife.

  “Ha!” he said, turning and squirming through feetfirst, dropping out of sight.