Two Rivers Read online

  Howie had a crush on our English teacher, Miss Bean. (The rules were different when it came to boys and pretty teachers too. We all loved Miss Bean. We all openly adored her.) However, of all of us, Howie’s infatuation was the most intense, and Betsy Parker knew it.

  “I’ve got it,” Betsy said one Friday afternoon when Mindy was occupied with something, or someone, else and I was contentedly playing second fiddle. We were sitting on Betsy’s bedroom floor drinking our third and fourth Cokes respectively. (Betsy’s dad had a refrigerator in the basement, which was always stocked with extra sodas.)

  “Got what?” I asked.

  “We’re going to TP Miss Bean’s house,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked. Though my heart sang every time Betsy spoke in the plural, the thought of doing anything like this to Miss Bean seemed like sacrilege.

  “We’re going to TP the house, put eggs in the mailbox, AND shaving cream her car.”

  I shook my head. “We can’t.”

  “Yes, we can,” she said. “If you wear this Superman mask,” she said, raising a lone eyebrow and reaching under her bed. She pulled out a plastic mask identical to the one that Howie Burke had worn for the last three consecutive pranks. (He was known to work in disguise.)

  “And you ?” I asked.

  “Lois Lane?” she said, smiling in the way that made my knees feel like oatmeal. The idea of sneaking around in the dark with Betsy was almost more than I could stand.

  “We can’t,” I said then, laughing and shaking my head. “Miss Bean didn’t do anything. That’s just mean.”

  “ You like her too ?” Betsy asked, accusingly.

  “No,” I said, reaching for the mask, wondering if Betsy was jealous. Hoping Betsy was jealous. But I did like Miss Bean. I liked Miss Bean in her sweater sets and pastel pumps that matched. I liked the way she smelled like toothpaste and patted the top of my head when I said something insightful in class.

  “She’ll know it’s not Howie,” I said.

  “How?”

  “Because Howie’s like six feet tall,” I said. (I was a late bloomer. I wouldn’t see six feet until I was sixteen. And then, as if my bones were making up for lost time, I would grow another four inches between my junior and senior years in high school.)

  “True,” she said sadly, and hung the mask on her bedpost.

  Relieved, I picked up my Coke and drained the last few sweet drops. “We’ll get him back someday,” I offered, closing my lips tightly around we .

  I figured out what happened during English class when Miss Bean slammed her books down on her desk and said, “Well, I hope you enjoyed your little prank. Very funny.”

  I heard giggles. Girl giggles.

  I turned around and saw that Betsy was sitting next to Mindy, who was whispering something in her ear. Betsy was smiling. My heart dropped with the realization of what happened. Of course, Mindy. Mindy who was almost six feet tall. I felt like I was melting into my seat.

  Howie sat in the front row as he always did, eyes wide and full of love.

  “ Very funny,” Miss Bean said again, her voice shaking now. She looked out over us and frowned, her eyes teary. Then she opened her desk drawer and pulled out a shoe box. She took the lid off, and the smell of rotten eggs filled the room. She went to Howie’s desk and set the box down. “I just got a letter from my fiancé,” she said. “He’s in the service. He’s stationed in Germany. I haven’t seen him in almost six months.”

  Howie looked confused as he peered into the box. When he reached in and pulled out the dripping wet letter, I heard Betsy gasp.

  “April Fools,” Miss Bean said, crying now, and then she rushed out of the room.

  Howie sat there, dumb. We all sat there, dumb.

  After school, Betsy came running up to me as I made my way across the soccer field. “I should have listened to you,” she said, reaching for my hand.

  I nodded my head. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t tell you, because I know how much you like Miss Bean. We didn’t know there was a letter from her boyfriend in there,” she said, running after me as I quickened my pace. “We did it because of Howie.”

  I kept walking as fast as I could.

  “I’m sorry, Harper,” she said. “We didn’t do it to be mean to Miss Bean.”

  I stopped and looked at her. She had two braids and both of them were coming undone.

  “It was stupid,” she said. “Really stupid.”

  And she had no idea that though I felt bad for Miss Bean and her stinky, soggy letter, I felt worse for me. Because Betsy had picked Mindy Wheeler as her coconspirator. Because she and Mindy had their own secret, and that it had nothing to do with me. I went home sulking and mad. I didn’t answer the phone when she called, and didn’t answer the door when she came over.

  But the next day when we got to school, Betsy was sitting at her desk, crying into her hands, and my heart sank. “Mrs. Praker’s in a nuthouse,” was scrawled across the chalkboard in Howie’s backward script.

  And even though we were at school and everybody was watching, I went to her. I put my arm over her shoulder and hugged her. In front of the entire eighth-grade class, I held her. And in the crook of my arm, she shook with a sadness I knew I would never be able to understand or share.

  “I told Mindy not to tell anybody,” she cried, wiping furiously at her tears. “She was supposed to be my friend. She promised . Why would she tell him?”

  Mindy’s motives became clear that afternoon when instead of playing basketball, she and Howie disappeared behind the school and came back five minutes later with leaves in their hair, looking both guilty and proud. (Howie said later that her boobs felt like peaches, an observation we all believed since none of us yet had evidence to the contrary.)

  Mindy Wheeler moved away before school let out for the summer, and everyone in the whole school seemed to mourn her passing except for me. I was glad she was gone. But thanks to Mindy, at least I’d found my purpose. I had been put on this earth to protect Betsy. To keep her secrets and to keep her safe.

  Jumbo Liar

  A fter my bumbled TV interview at the station, I left work and went home, quietly unlocking the door just in case the girl was still sleeping. When I entered the kitchen, Shelly was sitting at the kitchen table, her schoolbooks spread out in front of her, and Marguerite was standing at the stove. My spine went stiff as a rod.

  “Daddy!” Shelly cried when I stepped into the kitchen.

  I took off my hat. “Hi, baby girl,” I said, squeezing her, trying not to let on that anything was out of the ordinary. Normally, I would have thrown her over my shoulder like a potato sack and marched around the house until she pleaded to be released, but lately she’d gotten too heavy, too tall, and tonight there was a stranger standing at my stove.

  “Let go,” she giggled, and wriggled free.

  The whole kitchen smelled like something I’d never smelled before.

&n
bsp; “I thought you would be at Mrs. Marigold’s,” I said to Shelly, part question, part reprimand.

  “I was ,” Shelly said. “But she said we had company. That our cousin was taking a nap on the couch.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Did a train really wreck in the river?” she asked excitedly. “Jason Pittman in my class said a hundred people drowned.”

  “It derailed into the river. A lot of people got hurt. Not a hundred, but a lot.”

  “Were you there?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Did you see it?” Shelly was jumping from one foot to the other. She was always such a ball of nervous energy.

  “I didn’t see the accident happen. I got there afterward.”

  “Did you see anybody, you know, drowned?”

  I looked at Marguerite, but she was busy peering into my cupboard.

  “This isn’t great dinner conversation,” I said softly.

  “We’re not even eating yet,” Shelly argued. “Did you?”

  I turned to Marguerite, forcing myself to sound bright, cheerful. “So, what’s for supper?”

  “Maggie’s making jumbo liar,” Shelly said, climbing back up into her chair and reaching for her pencil box. “It’s got sausage in it. And rice. It’s spicy.”

  “That sounds great,” I said, “Maggie.”

  “That’s my nickname,” she said, winking at Shelly. Then she looked at me, as if daring me to challenge her again. “With my girlfriends. ”

  “We’re going bowling tonight!” Shelly said.

  “No,” I started. “Not tonight.”

  “Daddy,” Shelly said dramatically. “It’s Friday. It’s Ladies Night .”

  On most Friday nights since we moved into the apartment, Shelly and I would eat dinner (corn dogs for her, chili for me) at the bowling alley and then, before the ladies’ leagues showed up, we’d bowl a few strings. Because it was Ladies Night, she could order whatever she wanted from the laminated menu, and she could also pick whatever songs she wanted on the jukebox.

  “Ladies Night means ladies’ choice,” Shelly explained to the girl, Maggie , who was tasting something from one of my wooden spoons. She scrunched her nose and shook in a few drops of hot pepper sauce she had excavated from the depths of my cupboards. She tested the concoction again and smiled.

  I knew a lot of the women in the ladies’ leagues: a lot of the girls we went to high school with, some of the wives of my coworkers down at the station. Hanna’s sister, Lisa, bowled. Word would get back to Hanna one way or another about the girl. She knew I didn’t have any family from anywhere but here; even my own mother’s family tree’s branches did not extend out of New England. We couldn’t go. Anywhere. Two Rivers was too small for a stranger, especially a stranger of Marguerite’s caliber, to get lost in the crowd. She could spend the night, but then she’d have to be on her way. And no Ladies Night.

  “Y’all sit down,” Marguerite said. “Dinner’s ready.”

  Shelly sat obediently in her chair, moving aside her schoolbooks. I sat down too, exhausted and starving. The smells coming from that one pot were more intense than anything I’d managed to put together since we’d moved into this apartment. Sweet tomatoes, spices. I’d never really learned to cook; I hadn’t felt comfortable trying to do more than make myself a cup of coffee in Hanna’s kitchen.

  Marguerite grabbed three plates and set them down on the table. She scooped a heaping pile of the stuff onto my plate and an only slightly less generous pile onto Shelly’s. On the plate she’d set for herself, she plopped down some plain rice from another pot.

  “ What is it called again?” I asked, shoveling a heaping spoonful into my mouth.

  “It’s called jambalaya, Mr. Manners. Didn’t nobody ever teach you it ain’t polite to start eating without saying grace?” Marguerite asked.

  Shelly set her utensils down, pressed her palms together, and closed her eyes. “Father, bless the food we take, and bless us all for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”

  “Who taught you that?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Marigold.”

  “Oh, did she?” I asked. I would have to remember to say something to Mrs. Marigold on Monday.

  Shelly scowled at me. Marguerite leaned over to her and said, “At my house we say, ‘For bacon, eggs and buttered toast, praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’”

  Shelly giggled.

  Marguerite pushed the rice around her plate as I finished first one, and then two more helpings. Shelly ate a whole plateful as well and asked Marguerite for more when she was done.

  “Ladies Night,” Shelly said, tugging at my sleeve.

  I shook my head, and she looked at me sadly. “Please? It’s my birthday .”

  Her birthday. With all of the confusion and excitement of the train wreck and Marguerite, I’d forgotten to pick up another birthday present. Feeling awful, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pair of barrettes and handed them to her.

  “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, but her eyes were welling up with tears.

  “It’s your birthday ?” Marguerite said, putting her hands on her hips. “Well, it’s a good thing I made a cake. Not quite a birthday cake, but if your daddy’s got a candle, you could still make a wish on it.” She opened up the fridge and pulled out a pineapple upside-down cake.

  Shelly beamed.

  I agreed to Ladies Night against my better judgment, because of Shelly. It was the poor kid’s birthday, and once again I’d failed miserably. So Ladies Night it was, and the three of us descended the stairs leading to Sunset Lanes. And luckily, when we got to the door, there was a sign posted that all league games were canceled due to the train wreck. Inside, the bowling alley was deserted save for a few regulars drinking coffee and a couple of kids shooting pool in the arcade.

  “Where is everybody?” Shelly asked, clearly disappointed. Shelly was a mascot of sorts on Ladies Night. The women of Sunset Lanes fawned over her as if she were a small animal instead of a girl. Part of the reason I kept bringing her back on Friday nights was because all of those women made everything seem okay. Since we’d left Hanna’s, the absence of a mother in Shelly’s life seemed even more pronounced.

  If I had been like most of Two Rivers’s other widowers I would have simply found myself someone new, someone to fill the empty spaces Betsy left behind. But most of the widowers in this town were well into their seventies when their wives passed away. Remarrying was what kept them alive for another ten, fifteen years. I was twenty-two years old when Betsy died. I wasn’t even sure then that I wanted to survive.

  I suppose I could have found someone if I’d really wanted to. It was almost alarming how many women came out of the woodwork after Betsy passed away. Almost right away, girls we knew from high school, ones who never talked to me, were suddenly very concerned about my grief. Their casseroles arrived at Hanna’s doorstep, with perfumed notes expressing their most sincere condolences. As time went on the casseroles stopped, and they started to bring things by for the baby. Tiny clothes and handmade blankets. I would have thought these gestures to be only our community’s genuine efforts to take care of its wounded. But Hanna, who was always wiser than I, no
ticed that the gifts often came along with invitations—to go catch a movie at the Star Theatre, to join one of them or another at the Two Rivers Inn for supper, to attend the Christmas party at the Paper Company. “Those women are despicable,” Hanna snorted. “Betsy’s barely even cold yet.” So I accepted their casseroles and baby sweaters but not their invitations, and after a while most of them gave up.

  Of course, after a while I did start to date again. Over the years, there were probably a half dozen or so women I spent time with. But as nice as they were, as smart as they were, as pretty as some of them were (and some of them were very, very pretty), nothing ever got too serious. They probably knew that as hard as I tried not to, I was always comparing them to Betsy, holding them up against her. A few years ago when I met Lucy, an English teacher from Bennington whose brother lived in Two Rivers, I thought maybe I’d found someone I could share my life with. Lucy was beautiful, quiet. She loved books. But when I asked her to move to Two Rivers, told her I loved her, she just shook her head.

  “You’re in love with a shadow,” she said. “A shadow that covers your whole world. I can’t live in that kind of darkness, Harper. I’m sorry.”