Ch. 8: Postproduction (page 2)
by Emmet
Her mother had attempted, for the whole summer, had to give her credit for persistence, to make Sunday be the same. But it couldn’t ever be. Aside from the fact that she couldn’t cook nearly as well as Dad, the kitchen felt leaden and empty with Dad not there, reading “Dave Barry” from the Sunday magazine, dramatizing the comic pages, making them all laugh so hard Charlotte once splattered milk all over her pancakes, and her father, while pretending to admonish her to be more careful, got up and made her another batch.
The last Sunday Charlotte had been there she knocked over the pitcher of syrup – her mother had to pour it into a special pitcher, she couldn’t just use the bottle that had a cap on it like normal people. “Charlie! Can’t you be more careful!” her mother snapped, rushing for paper towels, a sponge.
But now Charlotte avoided Sundays. She felt a pang about abandoning Bobby, but Bobby wasn’t her problem right now. Let her mother deal with him. She just wanted out. She got up early and would go walking, weaving through the neighborhood streets for hours, stopping at a Starbuck’s for coffee, sometimes heading to the lake, to Sondra’s, to the library. Home by late afternoon, long after lunch.
*****
The days grew longer. No longer dark at 4:30. Jerry began production of the spring play, The Crucible. Grace was in that one, too, Elizabeth Proctor to Jessie’s Abigail Williams. I found another extracurricular. The Gay-Straight Alliance. It was all June’s fault. When I was visiting her, she asked me about it, if my school had one. I said, “I don’t think so. I think they had one for a semester, it fizzled over the summer, and that was it.”
“August, you have to start one up.”
“I have to?
“My God, yes. Certainly would have saved me la lot of misery when I was in high school.”
“I always thought that was because you were the middle child.”
“No, it was NOT because I was the middle child. It was because I was repressed. Anyway, I was fat.”
“You weren’t fat.”
“Well, I thought I was. Anyway, you should do it, August. You’d be great. You know gay people up close and personal.”
Coincidences. A few weeks after I got back, there was a notice in the teachers’ lounge announcing a meeting about just that – renewing a Gay-Straight Alliance. Inadvertently I made an impassioned argument supporting the idea and ended up being nominated to be the faculty advisor. Nothing happened for another month, and then Mrs. Gonzales told me the funding was coming through, I should announce the first meeting the next week. Location to be determined.
*****
I gave Grace a ride in my car a total of four times. I remember each once distinctly, for different reasons. I had been doing well up until the Gay-Straight Alliance. Keeping my distance, secretly looking forward to seeing her each day, now I admit it to myself, then I did not. Would not.
That first car ride. Where she was struggling to appear older, to separate herself from her younger sister, from her peers. From Jessie. She really couldn’t mention her stepsister without an undercurrent of pain poking through, and I got the sense there wasn’t anyone she could talk to about it. When she said, “My mom just lets me drive her car to school once in a while, and of course, drive Jessie places,” it immediately conjured up that odd conversation we’d had at tryouts. I think she remembered it as well, concluding with a forced flip tone, “She’s just the kind of person that people are always worried that she has a ride home, you know. And I guess I’m just the kind of person that people just assume…can walk.” But it touched me. And even I can get a hint some times, so of course I offered her a ride. I mean, anyone would have.
We got in the car and our hands bumped as we each strapped in. I had to restrain myself from jumping back too blatantly. It’s not that I hadn’t been alone with Grace since that night I both wanted to forget and wanted to remember and run through my mind and had never referred to. Especially that whispered feel of a finger on fingers. I kept it very professional each week when we would meet to discuss her writing.
But in the car, this was different. Just as it was different in Grace’s kitchen. A border blurred. No longer the safey of the classroom. Her kitchen – home turf. My car, my personal not professional space. And me wanting to imagine we were driving somewhere together, like to dinner maybe, or a movie. A date. She was 16. I was 40.
I concentrated on driving. Grace was quiet, and looked through the tapes I had piled in a box between the seats. “Hey!” she said. “You have Ego, Opinion, Art & Commerce. Goo Goo Dolls.”
I had forgotten I had that in the car. I’d been listening to it on the drive to school. “Yes, well,” I began, my eyes glancing at her, then back at the road. “That CD you made me… kind of intrigued me. I liked that song “All Eyes on Me,” so I bought the album.”
“There’s hope for you yet,” Grace laughed. “Musically, I mean. Can we play it?”
I reached over to take the tape from her and put it in when, out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of orange in the street. I slammed on the brakes and the tape went flying out of Grace’s hand and landed on the dashboard. An orange tabby sauntered across the road, reached the curb, turned, and sat on the grass, watching me.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “There was a cat…” I pointed.
She looked. “Oh that cat. I see him every day on the way to school. I think he’s homeless.”
“I’ve seen him too. He’s probably just hungry. Like most cats.”