Period 8 - By Chris Crutcher Page 0,12
guess I do need a ride.”
“Get in. I’ll take you home.”
Mary looks at the door handle, doesn’t move. Hannah unhooks her seat belt, reaches over, and opens the door. Mary gets in, leans back against the seat and closes her eyes. “Thanks. Not home, though.”
“Where, then?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know.”
“It’s midnight, Mary, I’ve got to take you someplace.”
“I know.” She pushes her palms against her forehead. “I know. Someplace.”
Hannah waits. “My place,” she says finally.
With face in hands, Mary nods.
“Seat belt,” Hannah says, but Mary doesn’t move. Hannah reaches around her and pulls the belt across Mary’s chest. “Just close your eyes, I’ll have you there in a minute.”
Moments later they pull in front of a modern split-level. Hannah helps Mary into the dark house, leads her by the elbow into the guest room adjacent to hers, helps her partially undress and gets her under the covers, pausing only to yell back to her dad that everything is fine and she’ll talk with him in the morning. Hannah has a million questions of which she asks none. She has never seen Mary like this. This is the Virgin Mary. Mary Wells is bubbly.
As Hannah starts to leave, Mary clutches her forearm. “Thanks,” she says. “Really.”
“It’s okay,” Hannah says. “Get some sleep; you look . . . just go to sleep.”
Mary’s eyes close.
Only hours earlier, Paulie throws his workout gear into a corner of his room, kicks the door shut, and sprawls facedown across the bedspread, dog tired from two long workouts and the weight of his first day without Hannah. He was in Period 8 with her and he’s seen her in the halls, but is no longer allowed to punch her lightly on the shoulder or put his arms around her waist from behind. Somebody else . . . he can’t think about that.
He answers a knock on his bedroom door with, “Yeah?”
“It’s me, Paul. I’ve eaten, but there’s plenty left over. Want me to warm it up?”
“I’m good, Mom. I grabbed a burger with Jus and Arney.”
“You need more than a burger, honey. You did two workouts today. You know how that cold water saps you.”
“‘A burger’ is a figure of speech. I ate three. Fries. Shake. I’m good.”
“You need your vegetables.”
She is not going away. This is not about dinner. “Ketchup, Mom. I had ketchup. It’s a vegetable. Since the Reagan administration. Read about it last year in U.S. history.”
“That was disallowed. And we’re Democrats,” Lilly Baum says through the door. “Ketchup is not a vegetable.”
Paulie sighs and pushes himself up, walks over, and opens the door. “You win, Mom. Raw vegetable platter. Lots of ranch. Give me five minutes. Dad come over?”
Lilly closes her eyes and shakes her head.
Shit. A raw-vegetables-with-ranch counseling session.
“Okay,” he says. “Five minutes. Lots of ranch.”
At the table Paulie opens a bottle of Gatorade and scoops the ranch out of a bowl with a stick of celery. “I thought Dad was coming over so you guys could talk.”
His mom looks away. “He had to work late.”
“Which you don’t believe.” I just saw him and he was looking forward to coming over. Paulie does hate knowing so much, but he also hates waiting for the hurt to leak out of his mother drip by drip. Time constraints alone make that a huge pain in the ass.
“I don’t know, Paul. I don’t know what to believe anymore. Listen, let’s do something nice as a family tomorrow, whether your father comes over or not. Why don’t you invite Hannah for dinner and we’ll get a movie or something. You two can pick.”
Shit. This is not the time to tell his mother that Hannah won’t be coming to dinner tomorrow or any other night, because he did exactly what she thinks his dad is doing right now. “Hannah’s buried in school stuff,” he says. “She waited too long to get her college applications in and she’s busting her butt to get her essays written.” It isn’t a total lie. Hannah is behind on her college applications. “Mom,” he says, “you’re not even forty. You work out; you barely look thirty and you’ll probably live to be at least eighty-five. This isn’t even halftime. You already have a perfect son.”
His mother smiles.
“Dad is who he is. Unless he has a stroke or somethin’ he’s not going to change. End this. You’d like each other a lot better.” He takes a deep breath. Man, who am I to be giving anybody advice?
His mother smiles again and touches his