Widows
Chapter Twelve from Lostine
I can’t go a step further in this deposit without I make it blue sky clear to you what Lostine is with me. I mean, I can’t talk for her. I mean, now I know Lostine, I know broken-hearted isn’t just in melodies. I have to get used to the maybe. It’s – sometimes – like I can feel her inside my skin, beating there like my own heart would stop without her there.
I said things before about girls and how I knew it would all just somehow lead to a bunch of crying. Now I’m older, I’ve heard of it lots. And just supposing I could ever think of one thing to say to a girl besides, “You ate my lunch, didn’t you.” Just supposing I ever had one heart reason to ever say anything nice to a girl at all - I mean, just supposing I ever acted how I guess I’m supposed to act with girls on account of me not being a girl myself and thereby stuck with mandatory interest in what girls might be giggling or whispering about. Account of girls, I don’t get graded above Bs in Deportment. Worries Mom. But too many years I didn’t see a girl who didn’t end up showing me her herd of plastic stallions lined up on her window sill. Just to be clear, I know for sure girls are nicer and better than the rest of us. For instants, they get better grades and help teachers and punching and nosebleeds is not how girls get things done. Girls are nicer. They’re – well, civil. They’re just tedious. That’s all.
Now all this stuff I just said, forget that. That was then with them and this is how it is now with Lostine. First, it’s not account of I’m older now. It’s Lostine. She doesn’t giggle or grin or jiggle or jabber. When we stop and look at each other, she just never looks away and I don’t want to. After the Art Contest at school, I started to think about all this sometimes and then more and then it didn’t stop and one day, I just did what other guys do, I asked Lostine if she had a boyfriend. I mean, it was lame, but with Lostine, there was some kind of desperate force shoving me from behind. There was only a week of my sixth grade left. Time was running out for us. I can see in her eyes when she’s thinking something good. When I said the boyfriend deal, I could see in her eyes what it meant and that she didn’t really, but she just turned to walk away. Last, she stopped and looked back at me over her shoulder and straight-faced said, “Not like you.” And then, she just kept going.
I heard enough about love to know this was supposed to be bad – a girl just walking away from you, giving you a cold shot like that, turning her back in your face that way. Once, at the grocery store, I listened to some guys I knew already had their Licenses – the store bag boys – said their names were Herkamer, Jerkamer and Jekyll – talking about getting experience with girls and learning when to make their moves and how a guy needed something Jekyll called a “line” when he talks to a girl. They sounded to me more like ranch hands learning how to handle cattle – only I just knew in my heart that girls were precious somehow and shouldn’t ought to have to cry.
So when Lostine said that and walked away, I couldn’t hold myself to the surface of the Earth. In the first place, I didn’t have a chance to say anything stupid – not right then. I could tell what I already said was OK and I could tell she still liked me. In the second place, I saw that look in her eye when I asked the boyfriend question. Right then, I felt just like I do in that dream I have off and on – in it, I’m flying – steering and banking with my arms just over the tops of all the telephone poles and wires.
Which reminds me of a third thing: I needed time to figure out what I would say to Lostine next. I knew I needed to say something to her way inside the ninety days it took me the first time. In a few days, school would be out for the Summer and I didn’t even know where she lived. None of it. The short version is, I just did what I heard of and she made it easy. All Lostine wanted to know was which movie and when. She said ‘yes’ with her eyes. We didn’t even smile. We just looked at each other for a minute. We didn’t kiss. We didn’t need to even touch. But I think what I saw in her eyes was just serious. That was the end of the easy.
One time my Dad was mad about something he heard in the news and he grumbled that, “People make their own damn problems.” Me? How do I cause my own problems? I figured it out. I just don’t listen. I’m looking right at you and you might be saying all this and that and be thinking I’m motivated to remember, but instead of actually hearing you, I might be watching how your hands fidget or how your nose seems bigger than it did or how I wish my hair would lay close like yours. So there I was, on my way to meet Lostine at the flick when I realized I didn’t remember which of the two theatres I was going to – both theatres same flick, start times only ten minutes different – about a mile apart – me on my bike. This was proof. My Dad is right.
You might ask yourself, “If Lostine is so important, how come he didn’t listen to at least her?” Next, you might ask me the same question. And since I’m trying to explain everything I’ve done against the laws of the United States of America and so maybe I can be understood and have my Mom still want to hug me and sing to me and so maybe I won’t get sent up and get The Chair – the truth is – well, ever take a metal finger nail file and stick it in a wall socket? I found out when I was little. You can’t move. Lostine touches me, same thing, can’t move – but it’s real nice – just close-up to her. Standing close to Lostine, I can feel heat on my skin – hot heat – a lot of it. So there I was, talking to Lostine about the movie and where we were gonna meet at. Really important information. But I’m thinking falsies. It never was even my idea, but it filled me up right then. Koz put falsies in my head like letting flies into a house and there they were back again buzzing at the worst time, so I missed what she said.
But you need the short version. By the time I got to the second theatre, I was most of an hour late. I had a hopeless, burning pain in my chest that I just knew was my own stupid brogans stepping on my own stupid heart. I just knew I’d done the worst I could do to a girl, but I went inside anyway. I spotted Lostine sitting all by herself down by the front. I was sweating from all the fast riding. My knees ached from at the first theatre where I blind-crashed into somebody in the dark and fell in a tangle and crawled through their popcorn on the floor. It was plain awful. But Lostine – when she saw me, she just reached toward me and pulled down the seat bottom next to her and gave it a little pat and smiled at me like seeing me was the best thing that coulda happened to her in a month. When I sat down, she just put more popcorn in her mouth, gave me the bag and went back to watching the flick with her face glowing.
A few minutes later, she found my hand, squeezed it once quick and let go and it made me jump inside. Only thing that kept me from leaving the surface of the planet this time and flying off into interstellar space was gravity.
Sometimes Lostine can look just like an alien with no eyes, I gotta tell you – like nobody you ever saw. We decided we’d leave the theatre separate. We didn’t really even tell each other exactly why except I think we both knew in our own heads we wanted to protect something between us that was touchy – something needing protection.
At the end of the flick, right after the lights came up a little, but before we left, I got up and walked away down by the stage where nobody was any more and Lostine followed me and we stood close together, her looking right at me and asking without asking. I squirmed, like right on some kina edge. Like always, I had a rock in each pocket and I stood there gripping onto them for safety.
“I thought you’d be mad,” I said.
“I was supposed to be.”
“I didn’t even...” I flat couldn’t tell on myself.
“But you came to me just like you said you would.”
“But...”
Her face close to mine, she touched my right hand with her left and said, “You don’t know me.”
“See you at school,” was all I could think of.
“They expelled me, remember?”
“For the whole rest of the year?”
“No. Just a week.”
Then she repeated just like before in front of the class when she Hollywood kissed me, “I know what you did. My little brother screams at night sometimes, but I know what you did. Because of you, I can tell him the man won’t be back – ever. I can make him believe me. He’ll be OK.”
And there it was – our faces so near – and I could feel heat come off her hot like I might poof into flames like a marshmallow held too close to a fire and we looked into each other’s eyes – and I – chickened. I kept my hands in my pockets. I didn’t kiss her back and I didn’t even know it, but it was my last chance ever.
Alone, she walked out first and when I came out, she was standing on the left side of the lobby and looking across my path at some movie posters on the opposite wall. The bright outside light was hitting the clear part of her eyes from her left and passing right through to mine as I walked past her, trying to act cool – like I didn’t care. It was hard to do. Like we agreed, she didn’t look at me and I could see right through her eyes sideways, almost like she didn’t have any eyes. Lostine’s eyes don’t have any color. You need to know that. There’s no blue or brown or green screen stopping you from looking right down sorta into her soul or someplace. Her hair’s the same color as the night sky where there’s no moon and the clouds’re a mile thick, but her eyes don’t have a color and when I look in her eyes sometimes I feel like I’m on the edge of someplace miles deep and I’m falling in where I could just fly – if I could just take the chance and jump off.
Later, at home, I was glad to find Mom gone to work, but it felt bad to be glad and I was alone, real alone and I got to thinking how I couldn’t tell right then which was worse, the swamp or the inside of my head. I couldn’t tell if “You don’t know me” was a kind of warning or just telling me something mysterious and beautiful. I couldn’t tell if it even mattered, because I didn’t even know how to find her again. I worried about how Lostine’s eyes would look if she was crying – like they were melting. I worried how that didn’t matter either because it might be me instead of her. Only thing I actually knew was what I saw in her face, how I was the best thing to happen to Lostine in a month. It wasn’t until a long time later that I would start to get what was down there in the dark with the widows in the bottom of Lostine’s bag of popcorn – what it was she did to me that day.