Criss Cross Page 2

  It’s hard to say how long the moment lasted, but when it was gone, Hector knew that he wanted to learn to play the guitar.

  He said so to Liz, during a pause between songs. She smiled and said, “That’s a great idea. You should do it.”

  Liz was a nice person who said nice things. She had a way of making them sound true.

  With each performer who followed, even the ones Hector didn’t think were that good, the idea grew stronger in his mind. By the time the fluorescent lights flickered on overhead, it was a fact to him. A fact that made the world more alive and more interesting. More promising.

  People were standing up and putting coats on, there was a lot of chatter, and with all the dragging and colliding of chairs it was hardly even noticeable when Hector stood up and his lapful of forgotten peanuts cascaded to the floor. He had to walk on them to get around to the back of his chair. As he made his treacherous way over the rolling, crunching shells, he heard Chip/Skip/Flip say that everyone was going (somewhere, Hector didn’t catch that part), and was Rowanne coming? And he heard Rowanne say, “I can’t, I promised my parents I’d bring Hector home right afterward.” Inwardly, Hector snorted. Outwardly, he tried to look like someone who needed to be taken home.

  In the car on the way home, Hector and Rowanne were quiet for a while, waiting for the heater to kick in. Hector positioned his feet over the two holes in the floor, to keep the heat from whooshing directly from the vent to the outside. It was a dark night, and Rowanne was a tentative driver. Being in a car with her as she felt her way over the winding back roads was like being inside a flashlight held by someone searching for a contact lens.

  “So,” she said, after a while, “did you like it?”

  “Yeah,” said Hector. “I did. I liked it a lot. I think I liked the first guy the best.”

  “Yeah,” said Rowanne. “He’s really good.”

  “How long do you think it takes to learn to play like that?” asked Hector.

  Rowanne allowed her eyes to leave the road for a microsecond to glance at him.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Years, probably. You better get started right away.”

  She relaxed as they moved into the streetlight-lit streets of Birdvale, then under the railway trestle into Seldem.

  Hector said, “So, I’m not mad or anything, I’m glad I went, but why didn’t you just tell me you needed me for an excuse not to go out with Chip-Dip?”

  “Skip,” said Rowanne. “I’m sorry. That was stupid. But would you have come?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hector. “Maybe. I would go now, though. Now that I know what it’s like.”

  When they reached their driveway, it was empty. So was the house. Their parents were still off somewhere. The lamps they had left on had lit up quiet, empty rooms all evening.

  There was some leftover ham in the fridge. They started cutting it into chunks and dipping it into a custard cup full of French dressing. The Swiss cheese dipped in mustard was also very good.

  “How come you don’t like Skip?” asked Hector. “He seems all right.” He went to a cupboard and found an open can of mixed nuts. Rowanne went to the fridge again and searched the shelves inside the door. She selected a tall, skinny jar of olives and the mayonnaise.

  “He’s all right,” she said. “He’s just not—”

  She paused to think. Hector stopped chewing. If Rowanne said something important, something he needed to know, he didn’t want to miss it.

  “He’s just not my type,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Hector. He had been looking for something more specific. For insight into the female mind. He was a little disappointed. But Rowanne wasn’t finished.

  “He looks at me with cow eyes,” she said. “I sort of liked it at first. But now it makes me want to slap him upside the head.”

  “Wow,” said Hector. “That seems harsh.”

  “It’s just an expression,” said Rowanne. “I wouldn’t really slap him. I don’t think.”

  “What kind of eyes should he look at you with?” asked Hector.

  “I think just human eyes would be all right,” said Rowanne.

  The next day was a Saturday. The air was soft and sun warmed and called out for some reckless act of liberation. Hector hacked the legs off a pair of jeans and put them on.

  He had to help his dad take down the storm windows and put up the screens. All the while Hector was thinking about the guitar idea. He wasn’t thinking about the practical part, of how he could actually do it. He was just thinking of how it had made him feel.

  After dinner he headed out to walk to his friend Phil’s house. He saw tiny pink buds and blossoms erupting from sodden black limbs. A winter’s worth of trash unfolding from shrunken icy lumps of charcoal-colored snow. Voices floated toward the sidewalk from the open windows of houses and from the windows of cars rolling by on the gritty street, real voices and radio voices, from windows that only yesterday had been shut tight. The balmy, sunny day had coaxed them open.

  The warmth was slipping into coolness as Hector stepped off the curb to cross Pittsfield Street, and as he headed up Prospect Hill Road he heard a few windows thud shut. But he still felt as if the world was opening, like the roof of the Civic Arena when the sky was clear.

  Life was rearranging itself; bulging in places, fraying in spots. Sometimes leaving holes big enough to see through, or even step through, to somewhere else.

  He waved to a couple of girls he knew, across the street. Their lips were shiny, their arms were folded in front of them, sheets of hair swayed gently behind like a hypnotist’s pocket watch, in a way that was related to how they moved as they walked. They were changing from caterpillars into butterflies. Hector felt himself changing, too, but into what? Not a butterfly.

  All he could think of was a dog. Friendly, loyal, with shiny eyes. They’re changing into butterflies, he thought, and I’m changing from a puppy into a young dog. Could that go anywhere?

  Two more butterflies materialized on the sidewalk a few houses ahead. Hector trailed behind them for a while at a respectful distance, lost in his thoughts. Until he realized that he had missed his turnoff and was going the wrong way.

  CHAPTER 3

  Boys, Dogs,

  Science Fiction

  Debbie and Chrisanne and their neighbor Tesey lay prostrate on their chaise lounges. It was the first really good laying-out day of the season. They had a radio and wet glasses with drinks full of melting ice. Every half hour or so they turned ninety degrees, like chickens roasting on invisible rotisseries. They also adjusted their orientation to the sun as it moved across the sky to allow its ultraviolet rays to be inflicted most directly and effectively.

  After the third turn Debbie raised the back of her lounge chair so she could sit up, and opened a book she had brought out with her. She was immediately absorbed in reading, and sat motionless while Tesey and Chrisanne continued their quarter-turn rotations for a few more spins, then folded up their chairs to go inside.

  One of them must have said something to her. The remnant of a question hung in the air, and she noticed they had paused, as if waiting.

  “I’ll be in in a minute,” she said. But then she forgot about going in. She forgot about the sun and how it was scorching the front of her winter-pale thighs and shins, the tops of her shoulders and her nose and the skin where her hair was parted.

  She stayed there all afternoon and came out again after dinner, this time in shorts and a sweatshirt, to finish the book. The backyard was now in the long evening shadow of the house. As the air cooled, she drew her legs up inside the sweatshirt. After she read the last page, she looked at the picture on the cover again, then tossed the book down onto the grass. Her arms withdrew from her sleeves and joined her legs inside the warm cavern of her sweatshirt.

  It was a science fiction novel, about a planet in another solar system where all of the Beings have lived calmly and harmoniously for thousands of their years until some people from earth come along an
d screw it all up in about ten minutes by offering them an apple, which none of them had ever seen. The Beings had been gentle and peaceful. They had lived simply, but were very advanced. For example, they used mental telepathy. Their tunics, constructed somehow without any seams or fasteners, were made of a miracle fabric that kept them comfortable in any weather. The fabric was iridescent or gray, depending on whether or not you felt like telepathing. Everyone’s tunic was equal but unique; you got one at birth and it grew right along with you. It had strands from your own DNA equivalent woven into it.

  The whole planet was nutritionally complete; you could just grab a piece of anything and eat it. The bitten thing would then regenerate. (But they didn’t have apples.)

  What was it about the peaceful planet, Debbie wondered, that while it sounded beautiful and idyllic, also made her feel ornery and restless, made her want to turn up the music, eat burgers, and squirrel away mountains of material possessions while she still could? Maybe that’s why the Beings rode their version of pogo sticks everywhere: to bounce out the rebellious urges.

  She did think, though, that she would almost welcome the part about how the unseen, disembodied governing Wisdom assigned everyone a mate. It happened telepathically. You just knew.

  Telepathy wasn’t working for Debbie so far. She had felt the sudden just knowing, and had tried to casually but silently project her whole inner self or something, but the other parties, the objects of her sudden knowledge, had remained oblivious.

  She knew that she would have to talk. She should have been able to do it. But she had developed a black hole in her brain. She could be in the middle of a normal conversation with a boy and the instant she thought of him that way—as a boy—the black hole sucked all her words away. Except for a few stupid ones. The stupid ones stayed in there.

  She called to her dog, Cupcake, who was sitting in the grass a few feet away. He trotted over, and Debbie scratched him behind the ears and talked to him. It was easy. Cupcake found everything she had to say interesting and important. He wanted to hear more. Her neck-scratching transported him to a state of bliss; he offered her his throat for scratching, then his belly. If boys could be more like dogs, she thought. Or Beings.

  CHAPTER 4

  Radio Show

  Hector was late, so Phil walked across the street to see what Lenny was doing with his dad’s pickup truck in the driveway. It was moving forward and back, forward and back over the gravel. When Lenny saw Phil, he stopped and turned off the engine, but he left the radio on and fiddled with the dial.

  “Whatcha doing?” asked Phil.

  “There’s this weird radio show I heard last week,” said Lenny. “I think it’s the right time for it to come on. Go around and get in.”

  As Phil came around the front of the pickup, he saw Debbie sitting in her backyard, and waved. She was scrunched up in a lawn chair, almost completely inside of her sweatshirt. The sleeves hung empty, and all that emerged from the lumpy gray cocoon was her head on top and her pointy sneakers from the bottom.

  One of the sleeves came to life, and a hand popped out briefly and waved back.

  Seeing Phil wave, Lenny said, “Is Debbie still over there? Tell her to come listen, too.” Then he opened his door, hoisted up to a standing position, and told her himself, hollering over the roof of the truck.

  Debbie slid to the middle of the long, benchy seat. Lenny sat behind the wheel, Phil leaned against the passenger side door with his elbow hanging out of the window. It was one of the more comfy places the three of them had sat since their mothers first propped them up in neighboring corners of the sandbox, watching them from lawn chairs to make sure they didn’t tip over. More often they sat on concrete stoops or on the curb. On bike seats or in the grass. Sometimes kitchen chairs, but more often outside. They looked for one another when nothing else was happening, the way you pick up a magazine or look in the cupboard for a snack. Not exactly by accident and not exactly on purpose. You could go out into the world and do new things and meet new people, and then you could come home and just sit on the stoop with someone you had never not known, and watch lightning bugs blink on and off.

  Debbie slid down on the worn vinyl until her elbows rested on the seat cushion and put her feet up on the cracked, dusty dashboard, forming her body into the shape of the Big Dipper. It was a relief to shift her thoughts away from boys and what happened when she tried to talk to one of them.

  “So, what’s this show?” she asked Lenny.

  “Just listen,” he said. “You’ll like it.”

  The show was called “Criss Cross.” It started off with a lot of songs that could be considered sick but could also be considered funny: “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” and “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.” Some were more on the sick side, some were more on the funny side, and some were just off the wall. It was the kind of radio show you would like if you liked Mad Magazine. Which they all did, or had, a few years ago. There were comedy parts, too.

  Hector appeared at Phil’s window midway through the show and listened with them, leaning on the door. The show ended with a string of “What do you get when you cross a (something) with a (something else)?” jokes. Then there was what must have been a clip from an old movie, a male voice saying “Crisscross,” followed by what sounded like a train wreck. That was it. A commercial came on, and Lenny flipped off the radio.

  Debbie’s feet were still propped up on the dashboard and, in their fronts-only sunburned state, her bare legs reminded Hector of a freshly opened, unscooped box of Neapolitan ice cream, minus the chocolate stripe.

  “Nice tan,” he observed.

  Then he said, “What do you get when you cross a butterfly with a dog?”

  “We give up,” said Phil. “What?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hector. “Probably nothing.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Leg Buds

  Hanging out in the truck listening to the radio show got to be a regular thing. It wasn’t an official plan, but almost every Saturday night through the spring, and then the summer, they all showed up and sat there in the parked truck in Lenny’s driveway, with the radio on.

  Only three of them could actually sit inside the truck. The other two had to listen through the open windows, leaning against the doors. The fifth person was Debbie’s friend Patty, who came the second week, and whenever she could after that. The first time she and Debbie walked over from Debbie’s backyard, Hector and Phil were already sitting inside with Lenny, but immediately they slid out and offered up their seats.

  This seemed unusual to Debbie. Then she realized that they were being chivalrous. Like gentlemen. Like men. A new part of them was emerging before her eyes, like leg buds bumping out on tadpoles.

  Midway through the show, Debbie tested her theory by offering to trade places with Hector, who was leaning on the outside of the door beside her.

  “No, no,” he said. “That’s okay. I’m fine. I like standing up. Leaning against a truck. For an hour.”

  A few minutes later he shifted his weight and said, “It’s fun.”

  “What is?” asked Debbie.

  “Standing up. Leaning against a truck,” he said. “For an hour.

  “I don’t want to be selfish, though,” he said after a pause. “If you wanted to have some fun, too, we could trade places for a while.”

  Debbie looked at him. He was smiling a winsome smile. A hopeful smile.

  “Okay,” she said, pulling on the handle, opening the door.

  She smiled, too, as she swung her legs out and hopped down off the seat. Hector helped pull the door open and, as he stepped around it, Debbie landed with force on top of him, or at least on one of his feet, which was painful. There was a full frontal collision with vertical slippage as in the shifting of tectonic plates, and together they stepped one way, then the other, then back again, trying unsuccessfully to go around each other.

  Finally, using a move he had learned from his mo
ther, Hector put his right hand on the small of Debbie’s back, took her right hand with his left, and spun her around and away, ballroom dancing style. In his mother’s lessons his dancing partner had been Rowanne, and he had gazed into his sister’s chin. Now his gaze met Debbie’s eyes. Inadvertently, but all the same. His mother had said this would happen.

  Debbie’s eyes looked surprised. Then they looked away. When they looked back, they had normalized. Normal eyes-ed. With the curtains drawn, at least partway.

  “Sorry,” she said. “About stepping on your foot. Is it okay?”

  “It’s okay,” said Hector. “I kind of liked it.”

  He said it as a joke, but it wasn’t entirely untrue.

  Then he remembered that he was supposed to be getting in the truck.

  So he did.

  CHAPTER 6

  In the Rhododendrons

  Debbie and Patty stood inside a thriving mountain of rhododendrons, flowering with primeval abandon against a withered, sagging garage that was slowly subdividing into raw materials, basic elements and individual atoms on the edge of an oily, pothole-dotted forgotten cinder alley. The alley ran between the backsides of tall, uneven hedges that concealed parallel rows of backyards.

  Across the alley from the rhododendrons, the hedge was high enough that only the top bar of the swingset inside was visible. Between the rhododendrons and the old garage, a sort of room had formed, an arched, private space among the branches, tall enough to stand up in. Even when it was raining, as it was now, it stayed fairly dry there.