chapter 7
Caulder is so nervous, he could die—don't tell him I told you. I was starting my morning howdy-to-Hally note in homeroom. By the way, we're doubling, sort of. Maybe. I know that wasn't what you expected. I hope you don't hate me.
Nifty, nifty, she wrote back. Who with? Petey-baby?
Mrs. Eagle Eye was not fond of note-passers. We had made an art out of getting a note from my desk to Hally's without having it snagged.
Smitty Tibbs. I was in agony, watching Hally as she read it, hoping she wouldn't freak or laugh or, worse, be totally repulsed. I guess I shouldn't have worried. But she did look surprised.
“So,” she said once we were out of class and free to breathe, “how did this come about?”
I shrugged. “Caulder and I have kind of made a tradition of going to the Film Society on Friday nights, and sometimes we take Smitty with us.”
“Oh,” she said, slowing down right in the middle of the hall. She stopped and looked at me square on. “Tell the truth—is this messing you up? Me coming along tonight?” I could have kicked myself for having made it sound that way.
“No,” I lied, and then followed with a quick truth—"I'm just worried I'm messing things up for you.”
“Don't worry about it,” she said, cheerfully shrugging us back into the mainstream of traffic. “I hate first dates anyway.” We walked along in companionable silence for a while, and then she said, “Smitty is still a little spooky to me. Which isn't to say that I don't respect him as a person.” She looked at me. “What's it like—going places with him?”
“Kind of strange,” I said.
“That's what I thought. Well, I guess I'll find out, huh?”
If things work out tonight, I thought.
I was nervous the rest of the day, and unsettled. I hate it when you don't know what's going to happen—when you're not even sure how you feel about what's going to happen—it's like, you have to be prepared to handle every possible scenario. It's not possible to be that well-adjusted.
As it turned out, Caulder and Hally picked me up, we all drove over to Smitty's house, and there was Smitty, standing at the end of his walk. Caulder got out and opened the car door for him, and Smitty got into the backseat with me.
That's all there was to it.
Caulder pulled away from the curb, Hally chatting along cheerfully in the front seat. She even managed to get the nerve-stricken Caulder's verbal motor running, and their talk began to fill up the inside of the car. For a while, I felt like I should be helping them break the ice—until I finally realized there was no ice up there that needed breaking. Then I sat back into my own seat, maybe a little embarrassed, glancing sidelong at Smitty.
All day, I'd been a little appalled at what I'd done—not because I'd gone over to Smitty's and asked him to come, because I don't see what's wrong with that socially. I mean, it's embarrassing and all, but it's no worse than what guys go through all the time. It was who I'd asked out. When I could have chosen anybody. It made me feel a little bit strange about myself.
Smitty had found himself a comfortable place on the seat, his head back, his eyes half closed. I kind of snugged myself over into the far corner of the seat, dropped my hands into my lap and sighed.
Hally and Caulder were laughing about something. I sighed again. Gradually, the sound of their voices dropped a blanket of peaceful detachment across the two of us in the back. We were just going where they were taking us, no responsibility in the matter at all. I began to relax. This must be what it's like for Smitty, I realized—going where they take you, but thinking your own thoughts.
We parked in the usual place, walked up the hill, and waited in line, the three of us joking around together, but once we got into the auditorium, I caught at the slack on Smitty's sleeve, effectively stopping him, and waited for Caulder and Hally to go on down the aisle a ways without us. They didn't even notice we were gone.
“They need to be alone,” I explained to Smitty, feeling a little like I was explaining things to Lassie. “So why don't we sit back here?”
He didn't move a muscle, just stood there in his usual suspended state, until I finally understood I was in charge of deciding where to sit. So I found us a couple of seats, led the way, and we sat down. Ginny and Smitty, alone together.
How I was going to keep up a one-sided conversation, I didn't know. But as we sat there waiting for the lights to go off, I realized that I didn't have to talk. Smitty didn't require that. He just sat, so I just sat, looking around, thinking. And it wasn't bad. I sighed and slid down into the seat.
Then the movie started. It was great—you got to root for right and truth and innocence, and in the end, virtue and love came through triumphant, just the way they always should and hardly ever seem to. And when the lights came up, Smitty was still sitting there. I felt the best I had in a long, long time—at peace with the world, knowing God's in his Heaven, believing in True Love, the Triumph of Simple Goodness and the Ultimate Unity of Mankind, and thinking it might actually be possible for things to turn out all right in the end.
I waited until Caulder and Hally came back by, and then we filed out after them, up the hall, down the stairs, and out into the night air. I let the other two get a little ahead, allowing them their privacy. It was velvet dark as soon as we got down over the edge of campus, out of so many lights and under the trees. And it was cold. I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my parka, nestled my chin down into the collar and blew out a tiny, contented cloud of mist.
Hally and Caulder passed under a streetlight ahead of us. They were holding hands. I got a little shock, looking at that little heart-shaped knot their hands were making. They were connected now—no longer through me. And they were making a new place between them with every step they took and every word they said to each other. Suddenly I was feeling very outside, and very much colder.
I glanced at Smitty's empty, serene face.
I wondered if his coming tonight had actually had anything to do with me. Maybe he'd forgotten about last week already. Maybe he hadn't even been waiting for us—maybe he'd just been standing there at the end of his walk, minding his own business, and we just sort of kidnapped him.
But I didn't believe any of that. I knew he had come with us tonight because I'd asked him to come. And he'd been taking a chance, doing it. That seemed like kindness to me. I had a fleeting impression then of the personality in the body walking beside me. I looked up at him shyly and smiled. But he didn't see.
Hally and Caulder were waiting for us at the car. Caulder was grinning, and he wouldn't look me straight in the eye. Hally was a little flushed in the face.
“My brother and I decided to have a little way-before-Halloween party next week,” Hally told us as we climbed into the car and started fishing for seat belts. “You want to come? All you guys? You too, Smitty. All you guys come together. You come and be my man, okay, Caulder?” she said, just as cute as you please—utterly captivating, judging from the look on Caulder's face.
“Great,” I said.
Caulder was really feeling good. He backed that car right out of its parking place like a man in charge of his own destiny. “Let's take a ride,” he said expansively. “It's not really that late.”
And so we did. Caulder and Hally went about setting up their quiet wall of conversation, and Smitty settled back into his seat, looking very comfortable and almost sleepy.
I was snugged down into my corner again, watching him as the streetlights flickered across the backseat.
Caulder headed out toward the country where the roads were smooth and long.
Smitty's eyes were closed. The car was warm, and the dark drone of the tires against the road was peaceful, almost hypnotic. Smitty opened his eyes and laid his head back against the seat, watching the darkness go by. I could see his face reflected in his window, planes of light and shadow, and eyes that were dark pools.
That reflected face was harsh and empty, but looking at it made me realize what a gentle face Smitty actually had, and it seemed to me then that the person behind it must also be gentle—I don't mean weak at all—just a quiet heart, tucked away from what could be a hard, stupid world. I wondered if it was sweet where he was, or if he was lonely there.
At that moment, inside my soul, I moved over next to him, put my arm through his, and rested my head on his shoulder.
I jerked myself up straight and turned my face to the window. My breath clouded it immediately, and I couldn't see anything but the mist I'd made. My heart was pounding in my ears. What were you thinking? I rested my forehead against the window. My hands were shaking.
Of course you would never do such a thing.
I was now entirely rational. I sat up in the seat and folded my hands in my lap. I could only imagine what might have happened to him if I'd touched him then, trapped in the backseat of this car the way he was. A nightmare. What I couldn't imagine was what bizarre twists my mind was taking on me.
What I had just felt—was it only, like, five seconds ago? It hadn't been anywhere close to pity. It had been something else. Something bordering on deep and heartbreaking. Some kind of fantasy. But where was I really? In the backseat alone with a mentally ill person. Evidently I was lonelier than I'd ever guessed, and—now I was afraid—maybe a little crazy myself.
I turned to the window again. The mist was gone. The stars were clear and sharp out here, out away from the glow of the town lights. After a minute, I worked up my courage and looked over at Smitty. He hadn't moved. He was just sitting there, watching the stars, all unaware of me. And what are you thinking? Where in the name of heaven are you?
Suddenly I knew how lonely I truly was.
Lost.
“I loved that movie,” I whispered, not necessarily to be heard. “I love happy endings. Paul and I used to make popcorn and sit around in our pajamas, watching that old black-and-white stuff on channel two. Me and my brother, Paul. We always liked the ones that ended like that.” I felt tears coming up in my eyes and I turned back to the stars.
When I looked at Smitty again, his eyes were closed, his hands folded, asleep for all I knew.
So I started talking. It was kind of strange, but everything that had been sitting so heavily in my heart seemed to be coming out of me, all in a whisper, here in the back seat of Caulder's mother's car. I talked about all my brothers, about the way it used to be when we were all together. I talked about the old house and Christmases past, about how I missed Paul, and about how there hadn't been any family since we'd left home, how it was all changing, and would never be the same again—how it was all going to keep unravelling until there was nothing left at all—
I began to feel drowsy after a while, the way I used to feel when I was little, riding along, half asleep in the back of the car at night, coming home from Nana's. Floating, kind of—distant and detached. I could hear my own voice, as though it were somebody else's.
And Smitty sat low in the seat, his head back and his eyes closed, maybe asleep—but maybe there, maybe hearing.
I owe you. Hally wrote to me on Monday. You name it, you can have it. Caulder is great. Caulder is wonderful. I got my brother to invite Pete's brother to the party, and—by the way—he's supposed to bring Pete. Just for you. So there. We'll be even.
It was like she'd stuck ammonia or something under my nose, the jolt I got from that—pure terror. But, hey—this was adventure, right? And it was a shoo-in nothing would ever come of it. So I dusted off my sense of humor, pulled a piece of paper out of my notebook, and I wrote: You really invited Pete? This is Peter Zabriski, we're talking about? Gorgeous Peter Zabriski????? He won't come. I'm not even sure I want him to come. What would I say to him? You think he'll bring his French horn? Ah, sweet mystery of life, I've found you. I even drew little hearts over all the little i's.
I folded it up, watched for my chance, and tossed it over to Hally's desk.
I never dreamed the teacher would get that one.
Not only did she intercept it—she read it. Out loud. In front of the entire class.
“I believe this is yours, Ms. Christianson?” the woman said, just in case anybody should not have had a completely clear idea who it was being publicly executed.
This kind of thing doesn't die an easy death. By first lunch, every human being in that school knew I had a crush on Pete Zabriski. That was just all I needed.
“Do not invite him to that party,” I told Hally after class. “Because if you do, I'm not coming.”
“You got it,” she said. Made no difference to her. “By the way, Smitty Tibbs was looking at you today.”
“Oh, yeah?” That gave me a little jolt too.
“Well, as much as he ever looks at anything. It was more like he was looking through you, but yes—his eyes were definitely focused somewhere over your left shoulder. It was toward the end of class. It's not like you would have noticed. You weren't doing a lot of looking around today.”
That was an understatement.
“Well, you gotta stop passing notes,” Caulder said to me when he came over to study that night. He was grinning his head off.
“Shut up,” I told him. I put my nose in the air and picked up my World History text so he'd know I wasn't interested in discussing it. “Who told you?” I asked from behind the book.
“Who didn't?” he said cheerfully.
I slammed the book closed and pressed the cover against my face. “I'm not ever going back there,” I said.
“Come on,” he said.
“I'm not.” I slammed the book down onto my knees. “I hate stuff like this.”
“Stuff like what?” James asked, glancing up from his English.
“Like, public humiliation.” I really didn't want to talk about it.
“She got caught passing notes this morning,” Caulder said.
“Oh yeah?” James said, interested.
“Was it awful?” Kaitlin asked, looking very sympathetic.
“The note was all about Pete Zabriski and how cute he is,” Caulder said. “And Mrs. Attila the Hun read it out loud.”
“Did you die?” Katie asked. From my face, she got her answer.
“I think it's romantic,” Melissa said. “He'll probably ask you out now. He probably didn't know you were interested in him before.”
“I'm not that interested in him,” I said, but I had to admit—it would have been nice to dance with him just once at Hally's party. No chance of that now.
“I am never,” I said solemnly, “ever going to step outside of this house ever, ever again.”
“She's just tired,” Caulder told them. “Come on, you,” he said to me, pulling me up by the back of my sweater. “Let's take a walk.” He made me put on my coat, and then he made me go outside.
“It's cold out there,” I protested. Well—whined, actually.
He put his arm around my shoulders and steered me down the front walk. “Now, now,” he said, using resoundingly pear-shaped tones and patting me on the head. “Nice girls like you just seem to get less dates than the other kind do. You mustn't let this bother you. Some day, the right man will come along…”
I hit him with my elbow. “Funny.”
He let me go. “Well, what do you expect? Writing that kind of thing about Zabriski. You should have written something nice about me. Then nobody would have been surprised.”
I sighed. “Is there some reason we have to be out here in the freezing cold?” I asked him. “I mean, besides the fact that I swore I'd never come out of my house again?”
He didn't answer for a moment. Then he said, “I told my mother about the other night. That you saw Smitty crying. I told her not to say anything to Mrs. Tibbs about it, but she probably will anyway.”
“Oh, Caulder,” I said.
“I know. But it's good I did it. Because she told me something I didn't know before.”
I breathed on my hands and waited.
“There was one other time he cried.”
“I thought you told me he never had,” I said.
“Well, like I say, I didn't know.” He turned us around back toward my house. “It happened about five years ago when Russell was still living at home.”
“Who's Russell?”
“Smitty's brother.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I asked you about him before. How come I never see him?”
“He's been away at school for the past couple of years. He's getting married this Christmas. My mom's supposed to help with the flowers. She's not real happy about it.”
“How come?”
“Well—she's not that hot about Russell, actually.” He was going to say something else, but he pulled his mouth closed.
“Why not?” I asked, prodding him with my elbow.
“Well, because…” He sighed. “Russell's not…well—I'm not so hot about him either.”
“Why? He beat you up when you were little?” I teased.
Caulder glanced at me and grinned. “Not me. I never got in his way.” He hunched his shoulders against the cold. “You know how Mrs. Tibbs is about community service? Well, she's always been like that. When Smitty was little, she would leave him with Russell, but Russell had always been left more or less on his own. So he's always done pretty much whatever he wanted. Like once, Carmen Anders, the lady in the yellow house down at the end of the street? Carmen yelled at Russell for running across her flower beds. Two days later, somebody threw a rock through her front window. A week later, her cat disappeared.”
“Come on,” I said.
“Nobody could ever prove anything. Russell used to get away with murder. See, Russell used to have two kinds of effects on people— either they didn't like him, and they could see right through him, or else they really bought his act—because, see, he could be sweet as anything when he wanted to be. His mother always bought it. I, myself, always thought it was wiser to stay out of his way altogether.”
“Didn't anybody ever complain to his parents?”
Caulder laughed. “Sure, they did,” he said. “And Mr. Tibbs was always willing to pay for the damage or whatever, but Mrs. Tibbs always complained to my mother about it afterward. She'd say 'I know Russell didn't do it. He would never do anything like that. Sometimes I wonder if John really loves Russell, the way he's so hard on him.' And then she'd talk about how 'boys will be boys' and how intolerant she thought the neighbors were. My mom really doesn't like Mrs. Tibbs very much either. But don't ever tell anybody I said that.”
“So, what's he like now?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe he's grown up. Maybe not.”
“Why didn't his dad just wale on him?” I said, disgusted. “My parents would never take stuff like that from us. If it was even hinted I'd done something wrong, they'd be on me like Velcro on a shoelace.”
Caulder looked thoughtful. “I think Mr. Tibbs tried—at least, at first. The Tibbses used to fight about it a lot—I could hear them out my bedroom window sometimes. But then they stopped. Now Mr. Tibbs hardly ever says a word. I mean, he'll say 'hi' to my dad over the back fence. But when he's home, he's usually hanging around this shop he's got out in the garage—he restores antique cars. Other than that, he just kind of keeps to himself.”
“Nice family,” I said.
“They're okay neighbors,” Caulder said. “They could be worse. Anyway, Mrs. Tibbs asked my mom to do the flowers for the wedding, and my mom couldn't tell her no.”
“You were going to tell me a story,” I reminded him.
“I was? Oh yeah, I was. Okay, so, about five years ago, Russell got into archery. He had this target set up in the back yard, and the neighbors—including my mother—were always yelling at the Tibbses because they were afraid Russell was going to end up killing somebody. Or shooting somebody in the eye with an arrow or something. So finally, his dad went out there and took the target down, and told Russell he was going to have to go out to the country if he wanted to shoot.
“So, this one day, Russell comes home—from shooting in the country—he comes home and he's all proud of himself because he's shot a bird. You know—like, on the wing, which is not easy. Probably illegal, but not easy. So, he's in the kitchen, telling his mother about it—and this is the strange part—Smitty's just sitting there, and suddenly he gets up and he goes over to Russell and he throws this glass of orange juice right in Russell's face. I mean, right in his face.”
“Smitty did?” I said, just making sure I'd heard right.
“I know. It's weird. Maybe he was upset about the bird—”
“Which you could hardly blame him for.” Personally, I think people who kill things for pleasure are sick.
“Or, maybe not—who knows what's going on in his mind? Anyway, Russell got up and knocked Smitty halfway across the room. Knocked him out totally.”
I stopped. “Knocked him out?”
“Yeah. Come on. We're going to freeze if we just stand here. They had to take Smitty to emergency, and they ended up having to leave him overnight because they couldn't wake him up. So it was in the middle of the night, this nurse went in to check him, and Smitty was crying in his sleep.”
The pain in my chest caught me a little bit by surprise.
“She still couldn't wake him up, so she called the doctor and got the family history from him. As it turns out, she was a student at the university med school, in psychology and counseling, and she ended up getting real interested in Smitty. The next day, she asked the Tibbses if she could work with him. Of course they thought that was a great idea. But then something happened, like her father died, or something, and she had to go away for a while. Then she had to go and do her specialization and internship somewhere.
“When she came back here a couple of years ago to work at the university clinic, she was still interested, but they couldn't get Smitty to go for it. I mean, it's not like he actually objected or anything— you know the way he disappears. Every couple of months now she calls. It never works out. Mrs. Tibbs called her last week—I guess she was thinking, since he's been letting us come over, maybe he'd go for it this time. But he faded on her again. Anyway, the psychologist wants us to keep coming around.”
I looked at him. This scared me.
“I know,” he said. “It makes me feel weird too.”
“And now your mother will tell Mrs. Tibbs about the other night…”
“And then Mrs. Tibbs'll tell the psychologist,” he finished.
“I don't like it at all,” I said, feeling this awful pressure in my chest. “I feel like Judas.”
We stood there huddled together in the cold.
“Let's not go to the Tibbses' tonight,” I said, shivering. “He never asked for any of this. We've just done it to him. And then we go over there and ask him for help.”
“No, I think we ought to go,” Caulder said. “It's up to him to decide if he wants to help us or not. If he didn't want us to come, he'd let us know. I think he wants us there.”
So we tucked up our guilt and we went. And it was business as usual—me confused, Smitty patiently going over the problems, time after time, every step spelled out so a kindergartner could understand it.
It was nice that one of us should understand something.