Miller's Valley - Anna Quindlen Page 0,84
here looking for Tommy. Some guy came to our house and threatened my aunt. So just tell me what you know about Tommy and I will leave and you can get back to business.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” he said. When he saw my expression he shut up about that.
“There are some rumors,” Steven said, beating his hands together. It was cold for April. I was glad about that. He had goosebumps on his chest. “Somebody told me he got in with some pretty bad guys from the city. New York, not Philly.”
“And?”
“And nothing. No one’s seen him. Maybe he’s with them. Maybe he took off because of them. Maybe’s he’s just laying low. He was living in that house on 502 that I tried to buy a couple years ago, remember? That little ranch with the two-car garage?”
I shook my head.
“Yeah, come on, you remember, you were there when the guy told me the roof was rotten.”
“Okay, now I remember. I’ll try there.”
“A woman named Casey rents it. He was living with her.”
“Great. Thanks.” I put the car in gear. “The door?” I said.
“I’m freezing, Stevie,” yelled the girl in the doorway.
“Oh, Jesus Christ. She’s just some, you know, some—”
“I know. I don’t care. I’m going.”
He started to cry. It wasn’t that big a deal. He was the kind of guy who cried at movies and birthdays and stuff like that. He enjoyed it. He thought it made him seem sensitive. But if he thought crying was going to change anything, he hadn’t been paying attention all this time. I was glad we weren’t indoors, though. There was one way he might possibly have gotten around me, but not out on the street with him still smelling like some lousy flowery drugstore perfume.
He leaned into the car. “Mimi,” he said, pointing at me, “you’re the one. You’ll always be the one. You’re the love of my life. Swear to God.”
“If you see Tommy, call me at school. Call me right away, all right?” He nodded. His nose was dripping. He had a scratch on one shoulder.
“Otherwise don’t you ever dare call me again.”
“I love you,” he yelled as I drove away. He meant it, too. I knew him. I knew he meant it, just like I knew he went back inside and finished what he’d started with what’s-her-name. Probably more than once. Charm is like tinsel without the tree. What’s tinsel without the tree? Shredded tinfoil.
I drove over to the house on 502, but no one was home, and I figured it was probably a good thing, since for the first time in my life I could imagine the feeling that made my brother want to wallop someone, and I was afraid I might wallop him for scaring me so bad if he opened the door. But I think I was mainly mad at myself. I didn’t cry in the car back to school, although over the next week I did. I wasn’t even sure why. I knew that I wasn’t heartbroken, and I guess the fact that I wasn’t made me disgusted with myself. It didn’t take long before I figured out that I’d learned an important lesson, that falling into things, bad things, dumb things, things that felt good but were bad and dumb both, was the easiest thing in the world. It was a good lesson to learn when you were still young.
“I changed your oil,” I said when I got back to the dorm and handed plastic flower girl her keys, but I really hadn’t. I figured she’d never know the difference.
I missed the big one. I’d always thought of the storm that killed Donald’s grandmother as the big one, but it turned out it wasn’t even close. This one was on the evening news, the national and the local both. Eddie said there were pictures of houses he recognized with water all around them, nothing but the roofs showing, although how he could tell which house was which just by the roof I didn’t know.
My mother had been at the hospital when the rain started to come down hard, and they asked her to do a double shift. Then they told her she couldn’t leave because of flooding on the roads. She said afterward that she slept in a patient room and couldn’t get over how uncomfortable the bed was. When she finally went back home the little barn had collapsed along with the shed my father had used as his repair shop,