Andrew – Seneca, August 1988
The cartoon coyote should be dead, crushed beneath a two-ton boulder. Yet when the stone rolls aside, he’s pancake flat but alive, flattened fingers and toes inflating again as he creeps to the side of the TV screen. Andrew watches Elizabeth laugh at the old Looney Tune then climb down from her chair at the kitchen table to roll the TV stand closer, as much as the cord stretching from the living room will allow. She turns up the volume to drown the sound of Momma’s feet stomping upstairs across the floor of her room.
Andrew rests the telephone against his ear, straining to hear the ringing at the far end of the line. “Turn that down,” he tells Elizabeth in vain.
Finally somebody picks up. A woman’s voice. Jake’s mother. Andrew bites his lip, suddenly at a loss for what to say.
“Can I help you?” asks Mrs. Munroe, annoyance peppering her tone.
“Jake there?” Andrew finally asks, voice breaking. Upstairs, Momma’s pounding increases. Andrew presses a hand against his free ear, struggling to hold on to Mrs. Munroe’s voice.
“--someone smashed the mirrors off his Chevy, so he drove it over to the shop in Elkins to see if he could get it parts. Lately that car’s been more trouble than it’s--”
“Can you tell him Andrew called?”
“Why, sure.” Instinctively her voice rises to be heard above the din of the TV and Momma’s stomping. “I gave him your message the other night, but lately talking to that boy would try the patience of a saint, in one ear and out--”
“It’s important I get a hold of him,” Andrew tells her. The ceiling shudders as something heavy falls against the floor of Momma’s bedroom. Andrew and Elizabeth both look up as the kitchen light rattles in its socket. Andrew wonders if maybe after breakfast he ought to stand on the table and tighten its shade.
“I’ll tell him you phoned again,” Mrs. Munroe practically shouts. Andrew tries to thank her, but she’s already hung up.
She’s covering for Jake; it’s as simple as that. For the past week he hasn’t returned Andrew’s calls. When Andrew’s driven by Jake’s house, he’s seen Jake’s muscle car parked in the carport, paint scratched, driver’s door dented in half a dozen places (did asshole Barrett really do all that?). Andrew wants to march up on Jake’s porch, pound the door, demand to see him. But he hasn’t the courage. Jake won’t even call him back.
Andrew moves to clean up the mess, feeling ashamed for scaring her. Mostly, though, he feels dead inside, like some monster on the late night horror shows he used to watch, his movements slow and
zombie-stiff as he gathers up shards of broken ceramic.
He decides to make it up to her. “How about some oatmeal?” he asks. His little sister redeems him with a nod and a smile. Andrew open cabinets, takes out a bowl and a box of oats, lets Elizabeth pour for herself. The Quaker man beams from behind her fingers. Andrew runs water from the tap, fills her bowl, places it in the microwave--all the while a web of sound spreading above their heads as Momma tears up her bedroom, searching for whatever the hell she’s lost this time.
As the oatmeal starts to cook, Elizabeth crosses to the far side of the kitchen, stiffens her back against the porch door. Andrew asks her why.
“Don’t wanna get too close to the microwave,” she explains.
A heavy object thuds against the floor of Momma’s room. “What’s there to be afraid of?” Andrew asks, sagging against the counter by the sink.
“Block the rays for me!” Elizabeth cries. She pulls the back door in front of her. “Come on. I’m not in the mood for this.”
“Grandma Rose says microwaves are bad. She says she never had trouble with her eyes till she got hers, and now she’s got cattle-racks and cancer.”
“Cataracts,” Andrew corrects her. “And there’s no connection.”
Except for an old woman’s fear. These last couple of weeks, Andrew has driven his grandmother to the hospital when Momma hasn’t been able to. Her first round of chemo hasn’t been effective; the doctors need to try again. No surprise that his grandmother’s mind works overtime to conjure the cause.
Allison shuffles into the kitchen dressed in her Hardlee’s uniform. She opens the refrigerator and stoops to rifle through the crisper.
“Elizabeth thinks the microwave’s going to nuke her,” Andrew tells her, hoping she’ll laugh, lift the heaviness from the room. Andrew misses her laugh, knows he’s had a hand in making it go away, but can’t quite find the way to put things right again.
Allison simply rises, a carrot in hand. She pushes her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. A piece of furniture drags across the bedroom upstairs. “Momma Hyde’s on the loose again,” Andrew remarks. He forces a smile, tries to pry her open.
“She’s lost her car keys,” Allison says. “Both sets. If she can’t find them she’s going to take your Purple Turtle.” “Like hell.”
Allison sighs. “Don’t start. I have to be at work in ten minutes. Someone’s got to take me.” Sunlight from the kitchen window streaks Allison’s auburn hair sunflower gold. Andrew’s thankful when the microwave dings and he can turn to take out the oatmeal, setting it on the table for Elizabeth, who slops on some milk.
“Don’t let the radiation burn the roof of your mouth,” Andrew warn as Elizabeth attacks the bowl with her spoon. She eyes him suspiciously before turning the TV back up.
Andrew wants to say something to Allison too, but the right words won’t come. He wishes there was a way to tell her about Jake, about himself, about the complications of caring for someone who doesn’t want you to care. But the sullen look on his sister’s face might as well be carved in stone. All Andrew can do is pick up a napkin and try to clean a blob of oatmeal off Elizabeth’s face. Even she pulls away from him.
The sound of an explosion shakes the kitchen, and Andrew glances up at the ceiling before realizing it’s just a backfired booby trap on TV. On the screen, a smoldering Wyle E. Coyote staggers off the edge of an impossibly high precipice. He steps through the air, momentarily suspended thanks to the Looney Tune’s screwy physics. Only when he looks down does the gravity of his predicament sink into his bloodshot eyes and he starts to fall.
“Beep-beep,” Elizabeth chirps. Her ponytail bobs like the Roadrunner’s plume.
Suddenly, Momma’s footsteps boom down the front staircase. Her stream of half-muted curses carves a path through the living room toward the front door. Elizabeth grabs her bowl and runs outside through the screen door of the kitchen, scared that Momma’s on the warpath. Allison rolls her eyes and looks at her brother. “I guess she found her car keys.”
Andrew turns down the television while Allison digs in the fridge for a carrot. Outside, Momma lets go on the car horn with a series of short, frantic blasts. But it’s Andrew’s VW, not Momma’s Aspen. Shit. She’s swiped his keys. Andrew starts for the door to tell Momma he needs his car today--his only day off, his day to get things done, to find Jake, wherever the hell he is. But Allison blocks his path with a raised hand.
“Don’t you start a fight with her,” she says. “She’s got to take me to work. She’s got to check on Grandma--no if’s, and’s or but’s.”
Something wells up inside Andrew, but it won’t shape into words. He stands there with his mouth hanging open. His guts are tied in the same knot that’s been there since last week when he ran off and left Jake in the woods.
“At least tell Momma not to take all day,” is all he manages to say as his sister heads toward the door. “Tell her I have plans.”
Allison glances back, eyes narrow behind her glasses. “Now you know what it’s like.”
Andrew wants to run after her, grab her arm, shake her till she lets go of the grudge she’s holding. But the sudden ringing of the telephone stops him cold; it’s as if his blood has forgotten to flow. The screen door slams as he mutes the TV. Elizabeth shoots him a mean look and harrumphs onto the back porch with her bowl. A shock of quiet fills the room. Andrew lays the cool receiver against his ear and mouths a faint
It’s Jake, whispering Andrew’s name into the receiver.
Andrew’s blood recirculates with a vengeance. His heart hammers as he thinks of what to say. “I, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” he stammers. “I was worried.”
“Right…. Like you were worried last Friday night, leaving me out there to get nearly shot by fuckhead Barrett.”
Andrew tongue goes dry in his mouth. Yes, it is Jake on the line, but not the Jake he knows. Not the baseball All-Star with a secret inside, a secret he’s shared with Andrew from winter to spring to summer. This is not the Jake who has lingered with Andrew to help load away gym equipment after his playground kids have gone home, the Jake who has laughed and kissed Andrew beneath the rafters of the multi-purpose room when there is no one around to watch.
Still maybe he’s there, if he’ll only resurface.
“You should’ve called back,” Andrew says. Stupid, desperate. “You should have let me know what happened.”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Jake says, his voice low but angry. “Fuckhead Barrett shines his light at me so I can’t see him, only hear his voice. He’s pounding the car with his flashlight, and there I am trying to pull up my goddamn pants. You hit the ground running. But me? Me, he’s yanking out, kicking in the ass, yelling to find out who the hell it was with me.”
“You tell him?”
“He punched me in the--” “Did you tell him?”
“Fuck no, Andrew. Has some redneck thrown a beer bottle through your window? Has anyone smashed up your car? You stupid jerk. I didn’t give you away.”
Andrew sits down at the table and cups his forehead in his hand. How did his life work into this perpetual equation—love versus self-preservation? If he hangs up now, perhaps he can will his stomach back to normal. Perhaps he can make his legs stop shaking, will his whole body to grow as numb as a corpse, a movie monster impervious to pain. Except what he feels for Jake won’t let him. Love pins him to this spot, makes him endure.
“I can’t believe you fucking left me out there,” Jake whispers.
The phone turns to lead in Andrew’s hand. Jake’s words die off in protracted silence. For a long while neither boy speaks, and Andrew wonders if Jake’s hung up. He holds his breath, fights back tears. On the muted TV, the Roadrunner silently zooms across a taffy-colored desert, smack toward a mountainside where the Coyote’s painted a tunnel. Andrew watches the Roadrunner do the impossible, escaping through the magic black hole. The Coyote hits his head when he tried to follow.
On the phone, Jake finally laughs. Bitter, hollow. “You know what Barrett told me? He said to keep the hell away from his daughter.” Jake laughs harder, a wet blur of sound that scares Andrew--could
Jake be crying? “I mean, a week and a half ago I walked into his house and he shook my fucking hand. He asked me about baseball and going to Temple U. And now he’s kicking me in the ass and telling me to stay away from his daughter. He told me if I gave his daughter AIDS he would tear my heart out with his bare hands.”
“Jake--”
“He told me if I ever came near her again he would take his gun and shove it up my ass and pull the trigger.” Laughing, crying. Jake is falling apart as he speaks.
“You should have returned my phone calls,” Andrew pleads. “I tried to call you, I did. I could have helped.”
“You fucking ran off! Don’t you get it? I don’t want to see you again.”
Jake’s declaration is followed by silence. He leaves Andrew hanging in the air, suspended, an anvil about to drop from above.
Andrew startles when Elizabeth pulls at his side, her fist wadded in his T-shirt, tugging. She sets her empty bowl on the table. “I need your help,” she says.
“Later,” Andrew tells her.
She keeps tugging until Andrew pushes her back, a little too rough. Glaring, Elizabeth slinks back to the TV as Andrew searches for words to soothe Jake.
“We need to see each other,” is all he can muster. “I don’t think so,” says Jake.
“We should talk about this,” Andrew insists. “When Momma gets back I can leave Elizabeth. We can drive to Cheat River. We can--”
“What part of ‘no’ don’t you get? I can’t handle this shit, Andrew. I think of you and all I see is Barrett pounding me with his flashlight. Christ.”
“You’re upset.” Brilliant, state the obvious, Andrew thinks. His thoughts are swimming, and it doesn’t help that Elizabeth has turned the stupid TV volume up again. He strains to listen to Jake, who sounds far away now—not simply across town. “Let’s talk about--”
“What is that? Are you watching cartoons? Listen, Andrew. I’m leaving tonight. Driving to my uncle’s outside of Pittsburgh to hang there awhile. Fix the Camaro. Let this whole thing blow over. The only reason I’m calling is to say goodbye and ask you to have a shred of fucking decency and leave my mom alone.”
“But what about Philadelphia? What about you going to Temple, me going to art school? Living together? What about all that?”
Jake’s voice goes cold and low. “That’s a friggin’ pipe dream. Can’t you understand? I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want to be like you.”
And there it is, finally. A flash of light in Andrew’s face, the sting of metal against ribs. “Jake,” Andrew says once more. “What could I have done?”
“You could have stayed,” Jakes says. He hangs up the phone.
For a long time Andrew sits bent over the kitchen table, head cradled in his arms, dial tone buzzing in his ear. The sound of cartoon violence fills the kitchen. But after a while he becomes aware of the sweat and tears upon his face and feels suddenly embarrassed. He sniffs back the wetness, sits up in his chair. Elizabeth’s attention is no longer on her cartoons, but on him.
She comes to Andrew then, with wide green eyes and open hands, her fingers cool as she peels the phone from Andrew’s grip and returns it to its cradle. She looks at him a moment then gives him a hug, her arms clutching tight, the scent of her hair clean and sweet. “You all right?” she asks.
Andrew nods.
“Help me then,” she says, switching off the TV. A smile blooms across her face as she takes him by the hand and leads him outside onto the back porch. The scent of pine rolls off the mountains and eddies in the shady yard. Andrew follows his sister down the steps and past the row of truck tires he had to
whitewash and lay in a row, so Momma could fill them with black-eyed Susans she sewed from seed. Elizabeth squeezes through the side door of the garage, which won’t open all the way due to the mounds of junk that have accumulated again since the Great Purge. Andrew sucks in his breath and follows, easing past piles of baskets and boxes Momma has bought at church bazaars and yard sales, sloping stacks that long ago choked out any room for a car. Atop one pile sags Andrew’s busted beanbag chair, drooping now like a slowly melting brown Pleather turd.
“There’s nothing in here that you need,” Andrew tells Elizabeth.
“Oh, yes there is.” She points to the far wall of the room, to the workbench unused since their father left half a dozen years ago.
Andrew follows the sight line of her finger with his eyes, but the garage is too dark. He squeezes over to the garage door, unlocks its latch, tugs up the fiberglass door. Sunlight floods in. “Okay, what is it?”
“There.” Elizabeth points through whirls of illuminated dust. “That old shovel.” Andrew stoops to see what she’s talking about.
“Under the workbench, see? Get it out for me.”
“That’s Momma’s,” Andrew tells her. The stupid-ass shovel they used to bury Buck. “She doesn’t need it,” Elizabeth tells him.
“Don’t worry. You can have it for all I care.” Let Momma be pissed off. What does he care anymore?
Elizabeth claps her hands as Andrew shoves aside a pile of old detergent bottles, then crawls on