“What were you saying?” says Louise. “About being okay?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Jesse. “I just know you worry about me. But I’m actually fine. Mom’s tough, but I’ve got friends who look out for me. And half the teachers in my school. They liked you and they look out for me because of it.”
Against her will, Louise smiles.
“You’re welcome,” she says.
“No, I’m serious,” says Jesse. “I’m fine. I’m almost twelve years old. I can look out for myself.”
“Jesse. C’mon,” says Louise.
“Well, then let Mom look out for me for a change,” he says. “It doesn’t always have to be you.”
Louise looks down. Unwilling to break the news to him: their mother will never watch over him. Not the way Louise does. No one will.
“I worry about you too, you know,” says Jesse. “If you took care of yourself a little better, that would help me out. If you really wanna help, I mean.”
“Took care of myself how?”
Connie Driscoll returns with a Shirley Temple for Jesse. A Coke for Louise.
“On the house,” she says.
He sips.
“Started dating better guys,” he says. “For one thing. Or no guys,” he adds, as an afterthought.
Louise nods. It’s painful to hear, but it’s true. When, Louise wonders, did Jesse become the person in front of her? In her mind she sees the version of her brother who, when tired, used to drape his small body onto hers, place two of his own fingers into his mouth. Time, she thinks, moves differently in Shattuck from how it does at the Preserve.
“And also,” says Jesse, “You should get a different job.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Lou. You’re really smart. You can do anything you want. You could go back to Union.”
“On whose dollar?” says Louise.
“I dunno. Borrow it from a bank. Isn’t that what they do?”
It sounds exhausting. She feels as if she’s at the base of a mountain, looking up.
But she’s climbed mountains before. She’s run up mountains, even.
• • •
They eat their meal in comfortable silence, listening to the clack of pool balls, the warbly music coming over the speaker system.
Connie Driscoll asks them if they’d like anything else, and Louise orders dessert. Why not? she thinks. She has enough saved in her bank account to support herself, and Jesse, for a little while.
Tonight, she thinks, she’s taking a break from worry—a little respite while she awaits her hearing.
Someone puts a nickel in the jukebox, and the music changes. The Everly Brothers, singing about dreams. Then, beneath their close hypnotic harmonies, Louise hears the squeak of a barstool being pushed backward. The lone woman who has been sitting there stands, digs out her wallet.
When she turns, Louise sees that the woman looks familiar, but she can’t quite place her. She’s wearing a suit with some stains on it. Her hair is short. She looks young: Louise’s age, or a few years older.
She also looks, if not drunk, then like she’s deposited two beers into a body not used to alcohol.
Louise knows, before she hears it, what the woman will say. “Excuse me?”
But when Louise turns, the woman is looking not at her, but at Jesse.
“Do you go to Camp Emerson?” says the woman. She’s holding a finger out in Jesse’s direction, pointing to his polo shirt, which bears the camp’s green logo.
Jesse looks suddenly frightened.
“No,” says Louise, rising, standing in front of him. “He doesn’t. But I’m a counselor there.”
The woman turns her gaze toward Louise.
“I recognize you,” she says.
Tracy
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Six
Tracy leans her head against the window of the Stutz Blackhawk. Her father’s car is the first she’s ever ridden in that has air-conditioning. The car he’d had for years prior was a Chevy, a practical four-door pickup that was also strong enough to tow a horse trailer.
She misses the Chevy. More than that, she misses the version of her father that drove the Chevy.
