Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

“What’s the matter then? Your face is drawn.”

“Isn’t Streetcar a little… adult for fifteen-year-olds?”

“Maybe for my generation. But hers?” She packed up her items and stowed them away in her handbag. “I need to run.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want her to see me. You should go too. She’ll get embarrassed and then overreact, trust me. Just go.”

“I think I should talk to her.”

“Okay, but be prepared.” She kissed me on the cheek and went out through the side doors.

I followed a couple of minutes later. JFK was sitting beneath the flagpole. I’d only closed the window halfway and he’d shrugged himself through. I stood next to him and we waited. Dale and a couple of her friends came out about ten minutes later. I tossed the butt aside and stepped up to my sister.

She had the same reaction now that she’d had last night. Before she could snap at me, I said, “Relax. No lectures. I just thought I’d pick you up, maybe we could go out for a bite to eat or something. We could talk some more.” Her friends shored up behind her, took her body language as a cue. “Bring your posse along with you if you like. My treat.”

I watched the irritation drain from her face, replaced by that quaint smile she’d given everyone else. “I don’t think I can today, Terry. We’re all going over to Mary’s to work on a science project together.”

To their credit, no one broke into a grin, despite the obvious lie. A distant thrum of thunder broke across the sky and gurgled toward us.

“Hey, Dale, save that shit for Mom and Dad, right?”

She took a careful breath. “I’m busy, Terry. I’ll see you at home.”

“I want to talk to you.”

She wagged her chin toward the auditorium door. “Did you see me in there?”

“Yes, you were good. Wonderful, really. Did you get the part?”

“We won’t know until next week.”

“We can talk about that too.”

I met Dale’s eyes. I tried to let her see that I wasn’t being pushy for no reason. I wasn’t trying to come down on her. I didn’t mean to be a pain in the ass in front of her clique. JFK barked once. It broke the spell. Dale turned to her friends and told them that she’d meet up with them later on. They gave me disapproving glances and drifted off.

It started to sprinkle again. I went back and forth from loving the rain to hating it. I lit another cigarette, and before I could put the pack back in my pocket Dale reached in and grabbed one and waited for me to light her up. I did.

I searched my sister’s face for the little girl I’d recognized last night at the lake. I didn’t see her anymore. She appeared harder to me today, more adult. Maybe she always would, now that I’d seen her turn Blanche DuBois into a wild temptress.

She opened the car door, and JFK jumped into the passenger seat and refused to move. She shoved him into the back, where he stretched out on his side and yawned.

I started the engine but didn’t pull out. We sat there smoking while the rain throbbed across the windshield.

“Was Mother watching too?” Dale asked.

“Yes.”

“She always comes and sits in back. She doesn’t realize how much we can see from the stage.”

“She thinks she’ll embarrass you.”

“She does.”

“Really?” I said. “You don’t look embarrassed.”

Dale finished her cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray. She turned slightly in her seat so she could give me the full effect of her glare.

“What is this?” she asked.

“I’m showing concern.”

“For what?”

“For you.”

“I got that much. I mean, concern over what?”

I hadn’t expected her to be so resistant. I should have. She was a teenager, and for the second time in two days I’d come from out of the shadows to pull her from her own crowd. It was stupid but I still wasn’t sure how else I could’ve done it.

It was a rough hand and I didn’t know how to play it. Should I soft-soap my worries over Butch or ask her flat out if she knew he was a punk working for Danny Thompson who might be a little too eager to step up?

I put the wipers on intermittent and watched the front doors of the school where I’d pretended to be a part of a society when I was actually an outlaw. I’d never believed I would need to get a joe job. I’d always expected to be able to boost and score and burgle my way through life. I’d fail a test and some teacher would threaten me with calling my parents, and I’d always think, Look at the scars on my chest, my old man made me this way. I’d feel a great love and a bewildering resentment for my father. I wondered if Dale felt the same way about him. And me.

She sat with her backpack on her lap. I had the sudden urge to yank it away from her and go through it. I had t? &my nose in everybody’s business. I didn’t want to steal anything, I just wanted to pry and sate my curiosity.

She said, “I told you last night, Terry, I don’t like you following me.”

“Jesus Christ, I’m not following you, Dale. But I didn’t think I’d need to make an appointment with your social secretary either.”

“I have a life, you know.”

“I know. I have no idea what it includes, but I know you have one.”

“If you’re interested, I’ll tell you all about it.”

I cracked my window and tapped cigarette ash outside. The smoke made JFK sneeze so hard he nearly rolled off the backseat. “I am interested. Of course I am.”

“Stop playing coy, Terry. You’re not here to take me out to the malt shop for a sundae. And you didn’t come just to chat or to ask me how much homework I have.”

She was laying it on the line. I had to do the same.

“Tell me more about Butch.”

“You don’t like him.”

“I didn’t say that.”

An angry grin crimped her mouth. It was so abhorrent that I wanted to slap it off her face. “You didn’t have to. You don’t like him and Mom and Dad don’t like him and the three of you are just buzzing around like wasps, aren’t you?”

“No, I don’t think that’s what we’re doing.”

“He’s my boyfriend. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“No,” I said. I tried to remember the days when I’d drive her to the ice cream parlor and everything made her eyes brighten. “Where’d you two meet?”

“At the lake.”

I waited for more. There wasn’t any.

“You know he’s too old for you.”

“Your opinion, Terry.”

“And the law’s. He could go up for seven on statutory-rape charges.”

She tossed the backpack on the floor, put her feet on the dashboard, and crossed her ankles. “You worried about the law all of a sudden?”

“Not really. Are you being contrary for a reason?”

She turned her face away, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. We Rands, we could work one another’s nerves without even making an effort. “What did you do for those five years you were gone?”

“Worked on ranches, mostly.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Why?”

“Yes, why? Did you like it? Is it something you always wanted to do?”

We were getting to places I didn’t want to be. “I didn’t mind it. And yeah, I thought about doing it before I wound up broke with a busted-down car on a road where the exits were thirty miles apart. But I didn’t know what it would really be like.”

She sounded genuinely interested. I wondered if she was just trying to find a way to hurt me. “So why didn’t you get another job?”

“Because I was only killing time. I knew the call would come one day, I guess. I didn’t know you’d be making it, but I knew it would come. And I knew I’d have to sit across from Collie and finally ask him the questions I wanted to know the answers to.”