Lisey's Story(38)

maybe for the only time in Lisey's memory - the constant chattering conversation of knives and forks against plates as seven hungry Debushers raced the roast to the bone had stopped. At last Good Ma had asked, Have you talked to God about this, Jodotha? And Jodi - right back atcha, Good Ma: It was Don Cloutier got me in the family way, not God. That was when Dad left the table and his favorite daughter behind without a word or backward look. A few moments later Lisey had heard the sound of his radio coming from the barn, very faint. Three weeks later he'd had the first of his strokes. Now Jodi's gone (although not yet to Miami, that is years in the future) and it's Lisey who bears the brunt of Darla's outraged calls, little Lisey, and why? Because Canty is on Darla's side and calling Jodi does neither of them any good. Jodi is different from the other Debusher girls. Darla calls her cold, Canty calls her selfish, and they both call her uncaring, but Lisey thinks it's something else - something better and finer. Of the five girls, Jodi is the one true survivor, completely immune to the fumes of guilt rising from the old family teepee. Once Granny D generated those fumes, then their mother, but Darla and Canty stand ready to take over, already understanding that if you call that poisonous, addictive smoke "duty," nobody tells you to put the fire out. As for Lisey, she only wishes she were more like Jodi, that when Darla calls she could laugh and say Blow it out your ass, Darla-darlin; you made your bed, so go on and sleep in it.

15

Standing in the kitchen doorway. Looking into the long, sloping backyard. Wanting to see him come walking back out of the darkness. Wanting to holler him back - yes, more than ever - but stubbornly holding his name behind her lips. She waited for him all evening. She will wait a little longer.

But only a little.

She is beginning to be so frightened.

16

Dandy's radio is strictly AM. WGUY's a sundowner and long off the air, but WDER

was playing the oldies when she rinsed her wineglass - some fifties hero singing about young love - and went back into the living room and bingo, there he was, standing in the doorway with a can of beer in one hand and his slanted smile on his face. Probably she hadn't heard the sound of his Ford pulling up because of the music. Or the beat of her headache. Or both.

"Hey, Lisey," he said. "Sorry I'm late. Really sorry. A bunch of us from David's Honors seminar got arguing about Thomas Hardy, and - "

She turned away from him without a word and went back into the kitchen, back into the sound of the Philco. Now it was a bunch of guys singing "Sh-Boom." He followed her. She knew he would follow her, it was how these things went. She could feel all the things she had to say to him crowding up in her throat, acid things, poison things, and some lonely, terrified voice told her not to say them, not to this man, and she slang that voice away. In her anger she could do nothing else.

He cocked a thumb at the radio and said, stupidly proud of his useless knowledge:

"That's The Chords. The original black version."

She turned to him and said, "Do you think I give a rat's ass who's singing on the radio after I worked eight hours and waited for you another five? And you finally show up at quarter of eleven with a grin on your face and a beer in your hand and a story about how some dead poet ended up being more important to you than I am?"

The grin on his face was still there but it was getting smaller, fading until it was little more than a quirk and one shallow dimple. Water, meanwhile, had risen in his eyes. The lost scared voice tried to call its warning again and she ignored it. This was a cutting party now. In both the fading grin and the growing hurt in his eyes she saw how he loved her, and knew this increased her power to hurt him. Still, she would cut. And why?

Because she could.

Standing in the kitchen door and waiting for him to come back, she can't remember all the things she said, only that each one was a little worse, a little more perfectly tailored to hurt. At one point she was appalled to hear how much she sounded like Darla at her worst

- just one more hectoring Debusher - and by then his smile was no longer even hanging in there. He was looking at her solemnly and she was terrified by how large his eyes were, magnified by the wetness shimmering on their surfaces until they seemed to eat up his face. She stopped in the middle of something about how his fingernails were always dirty and he gnawed on them like a rat when he was reading. She stopped and at that moment there were no engine sounds from in front of The Shamrock and The Mill downtown, no screeching tires, not even the faint sound of this weekend's band playing at The Rock. The silence was enormous and she realized she wanted to go back and had no idea how to do it. The simplest thing -  I love you anyway, Scott, come to bed - will not occur to her until later. Not until after the bool.

"Scott...I - "

She had no idea where to go from there, and it seemed there was no need. Scott raised the forefinger of his left hand like a teacher who means to make a particularly important point, and the smile actually resurfaced on his lips. Some sort of smile, anyway.

"Wait," he said.

"Wait?"

He looked pleased, as if she had grasped a difficult concept. "Wait."

And before she could say anything else he simply walked off into the dark, back straight, walk straight (no drunk in him now), slim hips slinging in his jeans. She said his name once - "Scott?" - but he only raised that forefinger again: wait. Then the shadows swallowed him.