Chapter 20
Every time I clocked in at the library, I both worried and hoped that once I was out with the books, I’d catch sight of Leonard’s mother.
The Liftons were listed in the newest city directory, their address on Coffee Pot Boulevard unchanged.
But week after week, I didn’t see her. I suspected that she was avoiding the library because she didn’t want to see me.
I still took my lunch breaks sitting on the bench out front, reading while I ate.
I’d found a copy of The Sun Also Rises in the donation bin at the thrift store in Cocoa Beach.
I put a dime in the till, made a cloth wrapper to hide the cover, and brought it home.
Most of the story was people being drunk, and watching bullfights, and getting in fights, and sometimes going fishing.
But I thought Carol was right about Lady Brett.
And I liked the part when Lady Brett tells Jake that another man they knew behaved badly, and Jake says well, everyone behaves badly when given the proper chance.
It was my own book, so I underlined that, and thought about it for a while.
It could be a cynical way of looking at human beings, or it could be an understanding way.
Take your pick. I wondered if Leonard’s mother had noticed that line when she came to it.
And if, later, she ever thought of it when thinking of me.
One afternoon, just after I’d finished my lunch, someone sat on the bench beside me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw work boots and denim jeans.
“Shouldn’t you be in school, young lady?”
It sounded like the voice of authority. I turned to see that it was just Russ Crandle, my lab partner from ninth-grade biology. I’d done all the work, as Russ lacked aptitude as well as motivation. Still, I wasn’t unhappy to see him. I hadn’t talked to anyone my age in weeks.
“I could ask the same of you,” I said.
“You calling me a young lady?” He laughed his high-pitched laugh, which always surprised me, as even back in ninth grade, his speaking voice was deep.
“I was doing some work over there on the shuffleboard flooring.” He nodded in the direction of the courts.
“I came out here, and who do I see sitting by herself but Miss Nora Chesnow, looking lovely as ever.”
I told him I was working at the library, full time, and he gave me a long, thoughtful look.
I should note here that since ninth grade, and probably before that, girls in school had called Russ Crandle “Bambi” because of his enormous light brown eyes, lined with dark lashes that I coveted for myself.
Back when he was my lab partner, before I’d met Leonard, I, too, had seen the appeal of those eyes.
But now I didn’t like him sitting on the bench and looking at me, Bambi eyes or not. I could only guess what he’d heard.
“Good for you,” he said. “I dropped out last year. Got read the whole sermon about how I’d regret it, throwing my life away and all that.
But I’m already making more money than the teacher who said it, I bet.
Started a business. Florida Flooring.” He got out his wallet and gave me his card, which looked professional, the company name and number printed in red.
Flooring Done Right was printed in black beneath.
“Wow,” I said. “You’re doing great.” I really was impressed. In school, Russ had a reputation for starting, and finishing, fights. And he’d once come to biology tipsy, humming “Sioux City Sue” and making jokes while I worked. I wouldn’t have guessed he’d be handing out business cards one day.
“You should keep this.” I tried to give the card back. “I’m not in the market for flooring.”
“How bout you write down your number?” he asked. “Fair trade.”
I told him I wasn’t interested in going out with anyone, and that it was nothing personal. He made a face like he didn’t believe it.
“You’re still mad?” he asked. “About the eggs?”
I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“It was Buddy that hit you,” he said. “If it makes any difference, I was only aiming for Leonard. We’d been egging people all night, just having fun, and then I saw that car he drove.
” He winced. “I know that’s no excuse. But I had the biggest crush on you, and before I could even work up the nerve to ask you on a date, you were going around with him.
In that car his daddy bought him. I don’t feel bad about egging that car.
Still don’t.” The Bambi eyes blinked. “But I didn’t want to hurt you, Nora.
You’ve always been sweet to me. To everyone. I’m really sorry.”
“I had no idea,” I said. I was talking about the eggs. I had guessed, even in ninth grade, about the crush.
“Jesus.” He slapped his own knee, hard enough to hurt. “I’m an idiot.”
“It’s fine,” I said. I meant it. Things might have turned out the same, even if not for that night.
Russ scooted to the middle of the bench. “Let me take you out somewhere nice. Try and make up for it.”
I told him there was no need. He said okay, well, he wanted to take me somewhere nice. I told him that I wasn’t a good investment of his time.
“That’s for me to decide,” he said.
I declined again. The next day he came into the library, this time wearing a collared shirt and so much cologne that when he approached me, my eyes watered.
I told him I was working and didn’t want to get in trouble.
He said that was fine, as he was there to get a book, though he didn’t know the name of it, and he didn’t have a card.
I passed him off to a librarian and went back to shelving.
When I went outside for my break, there he was, waiting by the library’s statue of Apollo, which was tall and alabaster white.
This Apollo was mostly unclothed, and his muscular physique rose up from a square of boxwood that didn’t quite reach his knees.
When Russ saw me, he turned his head in profile and raised one arm to mimic Apollo’s stance.
It was hard not to notice their similar builds. Russ held the pose, flexing.
“Don’t you need to work?” I asked.
“That’s the beauty of being my own boss.” He lowered his arm and smiled. “I work when I want. Stop when I want.”
I said that sounded nice and started walking. I didn’t want to be rude, but I had just enough time in my break to walk once around the lake. Russ asked if he could join me, and I said he was free to walk as he liked on a public path.
“That’s my truck in the parking lot.” He pointed. “The blue one. Bought it myself.” He smiled. “Nobody handed it to me.”
I appreciated the jab against Leonard. I told him it was a nice-looking truck, which it was. Even my father would have said so.
“I’ll probably get the newer model next year,” he said. “We’re about to sell our property. We’ll make a lot of money on the sale.”
I didn’t ask for more information, but before we’d made it halfway around the lake, he made sure I got it.
He said that a new highway was going in along Thirty-Fourth Street, and an out-of-town buyer had plans to build a shopping center over what was now Goose Pond and the surrounding properties.
Most of their neighbors had already sold.
Russ’s mother was holding out, and the buying price kept getting higher.
“Everybody thought it was funny we lived in the swamp,” he said. “Who’s laughing now?”
I knew what Mae would have said: You need some dip to go with that chip on your shoulder?
Still, most of me was glad for the company.
Neither Irene nor Roberta had called me or come by since that day I walked out of the courtyard.
I didn’t hold that against them. They’d both tried to save me, at risk to themselves, while I didn’t try at all.
Or couldn’t. We’d all taken water safety together.
One thing you learn is that when somebody is drowning, you shouldn’t think you can save them on your own.
It’s not like in the movies. Most people can’t pull a drowning person to safety.
It’s far more likely that, without even meaning to, they’ll pull you down as well.
—
A few days later, Russ again found me outside the library, and he updated me on the increasing price being offered for his family’s land.
The number he quoted seemed unlikely to me, but I didn’t question him, as I didn’t care.
He was convinced I did. If you asked him today, he’d likely say his telling me this number helped change my mind about him.
What really happened is that right around the time Russ started hanging around the library, Bobby came home from the swimming pool with a bleeding lip and an eye so swollen he couldn’t open it for almost a week.
I was startled when I saw him, though I knew my brother wasn’t exactly a model citizen.
Mae had told me that when I was away, Bobby drove some stranger’s Studebaker around town for ten minutes—with no license, as he was just fifteen—before an officer pulled him over.
But he generally got along with people, and hadn’t been in a fight since he was in third grade.
When I asked him what happened, he told me to mind my own business.
Mae said to leave him alone about it. I noticed he didn’t get in trouble, not with her, and not with my father. Still, I might never have put things together if not for Janet, who waited until we were alone in our room, the light already off, to tell me what she wasn’t supposed to.
“It was about you,” she whispered. “The fight.”
I lay there in the dark, sweating. I told her to please elaborate. I had to explain what elaborate meant, but then she was happy to do so. She’d been at the pool, too, she said. She’d seen the whole thing. Her mother had told her, sternly, not to say anything about it to me or anyone else.
“When we walked by,” she whispered, “one of those boys said something, and they all laughed.”