Josie And Jack: A Novel Part 15

"Her name was Teri. She was a waitress. I was only there for a week or two."

"Before that?"

"Somewhere else."

"You won't tell me."

"No, I won't."

"Because I'll be jealous?"

"Because it's over," Jack said. "They're history."

The next morning, Jack and I picked Becka up from work. We'd gone down to Pittsburgh to see the planetarium, which had just reopened after a renovation. The show had started at midnight, and then we had gone to a bar, so we were awake anyway. As we waited outside the club, which was a plain cinder-block building outside of town, he said, "If I had my way, I'd buy us a private island in uncharted waters and we'd never have to leave it."

"Are there still any uncharted waters?"

"There have to be some somewhere."

"Becka's coming," I said.

She was walking slowly across the gravel parking lot, wearing a light pink sundress. During the night a heavy cloud cover had moved in over the lake, and the predawn light was thick and hazy. The pink sundress was virtually all that I could see of her, floating ghostlike in midair. She was walking so slowly, I saw as she came closer, because her red shoes had stiletto heels, and they were sinking into the gravel.

"Better let her sit in front," Jack said, so I got out of the car and slid into the back seat.

When she was still about fifteen feet away from the car, she stopped to kick off her shoes and picked them up in one hand. She was singing softly to herself as she walked, and the hand holding the sandals swung cheerfully in time with her steps, but when she reached the car I thought that the heavy makeup she was wearing made her look plucked and artificial. The skin under her eyes was gray with exhaustion.

I realized that I had no idea how old she was.

"Morning." She smiled the same tight, tired smile she usually gave me. "How was Pittsburgh?"

"Postindustrial," Jack said as she climbed into the car. He leaned over to kiss her, sliding one hand into her hair and twining his fingers there. The kiss lingered. I made myself look out the window until I heard him say, "Hey, gorgeous."

"Hey, yourself," Becka said. I looked back at them. There was a foolish grin on her face. "You two been having fun. This car smells like an ashtray."

"You look tired," Jack said.

"Quite a night," she said. "Feel like some food? I'll buy."

"Sure."

"What about you, Jo?" she called back to me, not bothering to turn around. "Hungry?"

"Whatever."

Jack used his right hand to work the gearshift and then rested it on Becka's knee. "Quite a night? Is that good or bad?"

"The money was good." She laid her hand over his. He picked it up and kissed it, then dropped it so he could shift again. "G.o.d, I'm tired."

We went to an all-night diner and sat in a booth. It wasn't quite seven o'clock. There were only a few other people there, and none of them seemed entirely present-they all looked either half awake, as if they'd just crawled out of bed, or drained and half asleep, like Becka. She ordered hot chocolate and a Belgian waffle with strawberry topping and extra whipped cream. I ordered coffee.

"You don't want anything to eat?" Jack said to me.

"It's too early for food."

"Two coffees," he said to the waitress. She nodded drowsily and shuffled off.

Becka yawned and leaned her head on Jack's shoulder. "All I want to do is sleep for a hundred years."

"Sleeping beauty," Jack said. "I'll try to find you a hedge of thorns."

Becka smiled sleepily and kissed his shoulder.

Our coffee came with a dish full of individual plastic cups of half-and-half. I poured two of them into my coffee and watched the white liquid swirling in the cup. When I looked up, Becka was sitting up straight. She was holding a compact mirror in front of her face and staring at me. Our eyes met and she looked quickly back into the mirror and began wiping the heavy blush from her cheeks.

"So, y'all had a good night?" she said.

"Great," Jack said. "You should see the planetarium. It's cool."

"Went there on a school field trip once," Becka said vacantly. "Planetarium, zoo, whole nine yards."

"I've never been on a school field trip," I said.

"We used to go all over the d.a.m.n place. Even went out to Fallingwater once. G.o.d, that was a long day. Real pretty, though."

"It is," I said. "I've never seen it in the springtime, though."

Jack continued to stir his coffee. "Only during the winter," I went on. "Jack and I went when we were younger."

"Did you." Becka sounded uninterested.

"We went at night. It was closed. We had to sneak in."

"That's you all over." She glanced at Jack. "Never do things the easy way."

"I hate that c.r.a.p, though," he said, stretching an arm across her shoulders. "Tours and guides and cameras and gift shops."

"Frank Lloyd Wright desk sets and official Fallingwater coffee cups," I added.

Becka leaned her head against Jack again and closed her eyes. He said, "Human beings suck the life out of everything that's beautiful. The only way to keep something pure is to keep it to yourself."

"On a private island?" I said.

Becka, close to sleep, made a small whimpering noise. One of Jack's arms went around her, his hand burying itself again in her hair. His eyes were on me as she snuggled against him. "In uncharted waters."

And I remembered: Josie fourteen, Jack sixteen. Pulling the truck off the road into a clearing and hiking to the house in the darkness, afraid to use flashlights or even to get too close. The house itself was dark. A lone floodlight shone in the maintenance parking lot, where the park ranger's truck sat by itself, quiet and deserted. The house and the river that ran beneath its cantilevered platforms seemed like a single living organism crouched there in the silence. Jack and I crept around the grounds like thieves, and in whispers he pointed out the things that he found beautiful about the house: the wide terrace, with its slick, polished flagstones; the dark windows above the stucco walls, silver in the moonlight; the many-paned windows that formed a corner of the room inside, a corner that disappeared when the windows were open because by a miracle of physics it bore no weight. He kissed me by the lower falls. Then we heard a noise and we thought it was the ranger so we ran. Our boots crunching on the snow-covered twigs made so much noise that even if the ranger hadn't heard us before, he would have then, and we didn't stop running until we had our truck in sight. And I remember, when we got home, the way the attic smelled, and the silence that was the dead of winter, and the watery shadows that the icicles hanging from the eaves outside cast through the window.

The waitress dropped Becka's plate on the table and walked away without a word. Becka opened her eyes and stared at the waffle, which was covered in a drift of whipped cream and spotted with preserved strawberries gone shapeless with syrup. Dreamily, she picked up a fork, stabbed one of the globs of fruit, and put it in her mouth.

"If that's true," she said as she chewed, "you two are the purest people I ever met, 'cause you keep everything to yourselves."

"Everybody's got a secret or two," Jack said.

"Or three, or four." Becka opened her eyes wide. "I bet I can list everything I know about the two of you in under a minute."

"What are we betting?" Jack asked.

"Whatever you want," she answered.

He looked at his watch. "All right."

"Your father's smart, like you. But mean. I think maybe your mother is dead, but I can't tell because your story keeps changing. You have bad dreams and you don't like deep water or tight s.p.a.ces. You won't come watch me dance but you don't ever ask me about it, or get jealous like some guys do. You drink too much and you drive too fast, and you're vain as h.e.l.l." She looked at me. "And about two weeks ago, I found out you had a little sister. And the way you spend money, you must have come from it. And that's it. I don't even know how old you are, exactly."

"Thirty seconds," Jack said.

"Not bad," I said, although I hadn't known about the deep water or the tight s.p.a.ces.

"Now, you I don't know anything about." She was still looking at me. "Except that you look just like Jacky here, so I imagine he's telling the truth when he says you're brother and sister."

"What the h.e.l.l," Jack said. "Why would I lie about that?"

"I don't know." She picked up her fork, stabbed the waffle through the middle, and began sawing at it with her knife. She didn't look at either of us. "Forget it."

"He's nineteen," I offered.

She shrugged.

"Okay," Jack said. "What do you want to know?"

"Nothing." She paused with her waffle-laden fork halfway to her mouth. A strawberry fell off and hit the table with an audible plop. "But if you're not going to tell me about things, then don't sit here talking about them like I'm not even here. It's not polite." She shook her head and shoveled the food into her mouth. "I get so tired of all your G.o.dd.a.m.ned special little secrets."

She dropped her fork and pushed back her plate. She stood up, took a twenty out of her pocket, and dropped it on the table.

"I'm not hungry anymore," she said and left.

Jack and I followed her.

When we got back to Becka's house, she went straight into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. It had started to rain and the inside of the house was damp. My eyes were gritty with exhaustion.

Jack drew me a bath and sat on the toilet while I soaked. I had a feeling this was something Becka would not have approved of, had she known; but she was asleep in the next room, oblivious, and it was good to soak in the warm water and pa.s.s quiet words with Jack. Afterward he brushed his teeth in the bathroom; I crept into Becka's room and stood over her, wrapped in a pink towel. She hadn't taken off her makeup before going to bed and it had smeared. I stared down at her blurred features and had trouble remembering what she really looked like.

Becka's friend Michael knocked on the door at about two in the afternoon. Becka was still in bed and Jack was making coffee in the kitchen, so I answered the door.

He was older than I had expected; he had crow's-feet around his hazel eyes, and I wondered again how old Becka was. He was also easily the tallest person I'd ever met. He was wearing a pair of camouflage pants cut off at the knees and a sleeveless undershirt, and the parts of his arms and legs that I could see were long and spidery and covered with tattoos. His black hair was jagged and rough, as though he'd cut it himself.

He looked at me and smiled a small, private smile.

"Jack's sister." His voice was smooth and sharp, like a knife blade.

"Michael," I said and let him in.

"Where's Becka?"

"Still in bed," Jack called from the kitchen. "You want coffee?"

Michael shook his head. "Go tell her to move her West Virginia b.u.t.t. The day's wasting."

"Hang on," Jack said. A moment later he emerged from the kitchen and gave me a cup of coffee. "Be your charming self while I go see what's up with Beck, will you?"

When he was gone, Michael smiled the private smile again. "Are you charming?"

"Not yet." I was too sleepy to be self-conscious. "Try me again in a few hours. I haven't even brushed my teeth yet."

"Don't let me stop you," he said.

Standing at the sink, I could hear Jack and Becka talking in low voices in the bedroom. I wondered what was going on.

When I came out of the bathroom, combing my hair with my fingers, Michael was sitting on the couch where I'd slept the night before. He hadn't even bothered to push aside the sheet I'd used to protect myself from the rough upholstery. He was reading a paperback. He'd wrapped the front cover around the back of the book and I couldn't see the t.i.tle.

There was nowhere else to sit so I sat down next to him. He didn't acknowledge me. He read his book. I examined my fingernails. We sat in silence.

After a few minutes, Jack came out of the bedroom, looking exasperated. "Bad news," he said.

Michael closed the paperback and stuck it in his pocket. "Becka's bailing out on us."

Jack nodded.

"Oh, no," I said, without much conviction.

"She's tired. I think the two of us are going to hang out here. But"-and Jack looked at me, his eyes grimly apologetic-"she says you two should go without us."

"Whatever." Michael didn't sound as if he cared much either way.

I went cold. "Jack-"

"Go, Josie," he said, and it was a command. "There's no reason for you to sit around here all day."

The closed bedroom door was mocking us. I could imagine Becka lying smugly in bed behind it, proud at having engineered an entire day without me around. At that moment, I hated her.

"Fine," I said.

Michael drove an old Jeep with a deep dent on the front fender. The Jeep was open to the air, and the drive down Twenty-sixth Street to Presque Isle was too loud for conversation. Which was just as well, because I was furious. This girl, this ordinary girl, had dismissed me as easily as if I were some extraneous little tagalong sister. Worse, Jack had let her do it. I brooded so deeply over the slight that when the trip was over and Michael turned off the engine, I was surprised.

He had pulled off of a narrow paved road, behind three or four other cars. The Jeep was parked on a stretch of dirt between the road and a dense forest; across the road there were trees, too, but they were spa.r.s.er. In the s.p.a.ces between them, I could see a thin blue line that was the water. As we sat in the car, a couple rode by on bicycles.

"Very pretty," I said.

"If you think she planned this, you're right," Michael said. "She told me about it yesterday."