Hope Street Part 20

"Mrs. Proski is taking pictures of you and Foster, right?"

"Yeah."

"Have her snap a picture of just you alone, for me. You never looked this good before, and you'll probably never look this good again-"

Pretending to be insulted, Joelle spun around and threw her purse at him.

Bobby laughed and batted it away. "I want to remember what you looked like the night you were a princess. And I don't want Foster's ugly mug in the picture."

"Drew Foster isn't ugly." She knew that was nothing more than Bobby's teasing, but she wasn't in the mood to be teased tonight. She was anxious-about whether she was truly pretty enough to belong with Drew, whether she was even remotely cla.s.sy enough to fit in at the prom. Whether after the dance he would drive her to the lake. Whether he'd expect her to go all the way with him because he'd spent so much money on the tickets and flowers and his tux. Whether he would still want her to be his girlfriend tomorrow.

Any other time, she'd welcome Bobby's taunting and give as good as she got. But not tonight.

Bobby seemed to sense that. His smile lost its sneering edge and he pushed himself off the bed. "You're gonna have a good time," he a.s.sured her. "Remember, JoJo, you're better than they are."

"No, I'm not." In front of anyone else, she would have hidden her insecurity. But not Bobby. They went back too far, knew each other too well.

She was aware that the Hill kids tolerated her only because she was Drew's girlfriend, not because they thought highly of her. She didn't wear the right brand of jeans, didn't take all the honors cla.s.ses, didn't partic.i.p.ate in glee club or cheerleaders or student government. The rich girls treated her pleasantly only out of respect for Drew-which was why, when she wasn't with him, she hung out with Bobby and the other Tubtown kids she'd grown up with. Some of them had stopped being friendly to her once she'd started going with Drew, though. They thought she was stuck-up.

She wasn't. At least Bobby recognized that.

The doorbell rang again. "Drew's here," Wanda bellowed.

Joelle didn't miss the flicker of disapproval on Bobby's face. He resented the Hill kids because they viewed him as trash. Joelle insisted that Drew wasn't like the others, but Bobby considered him just another spoiled, arrogant rich boy. If only he knew Drew the way she did, he'd realize how wrong he was.

She and Bobby emerged from her bedroom and met up with Drew in the hallway. He had asked her what color her dress was and he'd rented a tux to match-powder blue, his s.h.i.+rt white with blue-trimmed ruffles down the front and his c.u.mmerbund and bow tie a slightly darker, satiny blue, the same color as her dress.

Unlike her hair, his was perfect, parted on the side and slicked smooth across the crown of his head. He kept it relatively short-because it was easier, he claimed, but she suspected he just didn't want anyone to mistake him for a hippie.

"You look beautiful," he said, then glanced at Bobby. "Bobby D."

"Foster," Bobby responded curtly.

Staring at her two favorite guys in the whole world, Joelle had to stifle a laugh. One clean-cut, polished and elegant, the other scruffy and defiant. They were so different, and she loved them both. But Drew was easier on her nerves. He never seemed to struggle. He never suffered a moment's doubt. He understood what he wanted from life, and he knew how to get it. He wore his good fortune as if it were a comfortable pair of shoes.

Good fortune had never favored Bobby DiFranco. Maybe that was why he wore scuffed old boots.

"I gotta go," he said, patting Joelle on the shoulder. "Have fun. And don't forget that photo."

Joelle watched him stride through the living room, mumble a farewell to her mother and Mrs. Proski and then swing out the front door. She wished he weren't so negative about the prom and the Hill kids. He could have gone to the prom with Margie and had fun tonight, too.

If he and Margie went down to the lake, he'd probably have fun, she realized with a quiet laugh. Maybe even more fun than she and Drew would have at the prom.

SHE DIDN'T GO TO THE LAKE with Drew that night. Instead he and two of his buddies and their dates all drove to a nightclub three towns away. Joelle was the only one of the six without fake ID, so she'd ordered ginger ale while they'd all gotten tipsy on c.o.c.ktails, and she'd felt like an idiot. But to her great relief the question of whether to go all the way with Drew never came up.

Two weeks later, they were high-school graduates. Joelle had a job running the cash register at Harley's, a convenience store where she'd worked the previous summer. She had enrolled in two cla.s.ses at the community college, which would start in September. Two were all she could afford, and the light schedule would allow her to continue working at Harley's during the school year.

Drew would be heading to Dartmouth at the end of August. He spent the hot, empty days of summer playing tennis and lounging by the pool with the other Hill kids at Green Gates Country Club. He didn't bother to get a job. His parents provided him all the money he needed.

Bobby got his draft notice. He'd scored a low number in the lottery and college had been out of the question for him, so he couldn't apply for a student deferment. "I don't want to go to Vietnam," he confessed to Joelle, "but I'm not gonna shoot my kneecap off or pretend I'm queer just to stay out. I just can't do that." With a philosophical shrug, he added, "At least Vietnam isn't Holmdell. Going there can't be as bad as staying here."

He had a job doing maintenance at the town cemetery, mowing the gra.s.s, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the shrubs and clearing away the wilted flowers left by visitors. He spent most of his evenings with Margie and Joelle spent most of hers with Drew. But two nights a week she had to work until 10:00 p.m. at Harley's, and Drew considered that hour too late for them to get together. On those nights, Bobby would swing by Harley's in his rattly old pickup truck and drive her down to the A&W. They'd sneak into the woods beyond the parking lot and share a joint. Once it was nothing more than a wisp of lingering smoke, they'd buy root beers and split a jumbo order of fries and they'd talk.

"You think he's gonna ask you to marry him?" Bobby inquired one evening while they were satisfying their munchies with hot, salty fries.

"I don't know. It doesn't make sense to be engaged while he's in New Hamps.h.i.+re and I'm here."

"But that's what you're hoping for, right?"

"Yeah," she admitted, feeling her cheeks warm. The Hill girls were all leaving town for college, and they talked about having careers and waiting until they were established before they got married. But Joelle was never going to be "established"-not unless Drew established her as his wife.

She wouldn't mind having a career, too. She wasn't afraid of work. Before she had a career, though, she'd have to earn a college degree. Accomplis.h.i.+ng that might take her longer than normal if she enrolled in only two courses a semester at the community college, but eventually she'd transfer to a four-year university and graduate. Drew wouldn't want to have a wife who wasn't college educated.

Sitting beneath the awning bordering the parking lot at the A&W, Bobby sent her an enigmatic smile and drawled, "You wanna get yourself a big fat diamond on your finger." He always smiled that way after he'd smoked pot, a mysterious I-know-something-you-don't-know smile. "You wanna drive a Caddy and wear a mink and have everyone call you Mrs. Drew Foster." Still smiling, he shook his head. "You should aim higher, JoJo. If you can get Foster, imagine who else you could get. The world is filled with rich guys. Why settle for him?"

"I'm not looking for a rich guy," she insisted, trying not to let Bobby rile her. "That's not why I love Drew. I don't put Margie down, Bobby. Don't you put Drew down."

She never smoked pot with Drew that summer. He preferred liquor to drugs. He seemed to believe booze was sophisticated. He preferred mixed drinks, and he liked to lecture on which brands of vodka or Scotch were the best. At least he never got smashed on a regular basis, like some of his friends.

She wished he would take her to Green Gates some evenings, but he rarely did. He would complain to her that he'd already spent the whole day there and didn't want to go to the nighttime swim or sign up for the lighted tennis courts. Not that Joelle knew a tennis racquet from a snowshoe, but she would have liked to swim in the pool. She owned one swimsuit, but it was a black bikini. If Drew saw her in it, it might make him love her a little more.

They did go to the lake pretty often in his Corvette-but not to swim. Making out wasn't easy in that car, since it had no backseat. She let Drew touch her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and even slide his fingers inside her shorts, which seemed to excite him more than her. And she touched him, stroked him, let him come in her hand. That always struck her as incredibly intimate, his spurting all his fluid onto her palms. After she cleaned up, using tissues from the portable pack he kept stashed in his glove compartment, he'd always cuddle her and tell her he loved her.

As the summer stretched into August, he began to push for more. "We're going to be apart for months," he reminded her. "If we did this, it would make us closer. It would seal our love."

"I don't know, Drew...Maybe I'm not ready yet." Everyone was always talking about free love, but she didn't get how anything that significant could be free. If she gave in to Drew, would he love her more or less? If she gave in to him, would she love herself more or less?

"We're high-school graduates, Joelle. How much more ready do we have to be?"

"s.e.x isn't exactly like trigonometry," she argued. "You don't just take a course and pa.s.s."

Whenever they had these discussions, Drew always worked hard not to get impatient. Joelle could tell; she could see him wrestling with his temper, breathing deeply then holding her hand or wrapping his arm around her. He didn't yell. He didn't force. That told her he must love her.

Toward the end of August, he tried a different approach. "It would be like this gift you gave me to bring with me to Dartmouth," he explained. "This special thing we shared that would keep us close, even when I'm away."

"If I gave you that gift, how do I know you wouldn't just leave and forget I ever existed?"

"Because I love you. You know I do."

The night before he planned to leave for college, she yielded. She still wasn't sure she was ready or if it was right, but when she imagined him traveling all the way to New Hamps.h.i.+re and meeting all those new, smart, sophisticated Ivy Leaguers, she couldn't bear the thought that he wouldn't have something of hers in his possession, something precious, something she would never give to anyone else. So she told him yes.

He borrowed his father's Lincoln for the occasion because it had a wide, well-upholstered backseat, which Drew carefully draped with a towel because he was aware she would bleed. He brought a condom. They drank half a bottle of Chianti, the kind with straw around the base, and Joelle told him to save the bottle when it was empty and stick a candle in it, and every time he lit the candle it would be like a memory of her burning in his soul. He told her she was a poet.

Despite the wine and the towel and the car's wide backseat, it hurt. All she felt was pain and Drew's hot, wine-tinged breath in her face. She'd believed making love was supposed to feel good, but it didn't. It hurt, hurt, hurt.

At least it ended quickly. Drew tore into her and pounded on her for less than thirty seconds, and then he groaned and shuddered and was done. He pulled out of her so fast the condom remained behind. That was probably the worst part of it, so embarra.s.sing, his poking around with his fingers and dragging the condom out.

"I love you, Joelle," he whispered. "I love you so much."

Hearing those words soothed the awful burning between her legs. They'd made love and now they were bound forever. Because she'd given him this, he would never stop loving her.

The next day, he was gone.

THREE.

JOELLE STOOD IN THE open doorway, a silhouette in the light from the mudroom, and stared into the garage's gloom. Bobby watched her through the winds.h.i.+eld. Even with her face in shadow, he could picture her features-the hollows of her cheeks, the pointed tip of her nose, the faint lines fanning out from the corners of her dazzling blue eyes. He'd fallen in love with her face when he was ten years old, sitting three rows to her left in Mrs. Schmidt's fourth-grade cla.s.s, before he'd had any idea what falling in love meant. And today, forty-seven years later, he still loved her face.

He wasn't the sort who ran away from a problem, but as long as Drew Foster had been sitting in his kitchen, threatening everything Bobby cared about, everything that had ever mattered to him, he couldn't have stayed. Not because Foster scared him but because he scared himself.

His father had been a violent man, and Bobby had sworn he would be exactly the kind of man his father wasn't. But looking at Foster, listening to him calmly explain why Bobby should tell Claudia the truth about her birth, had made Bobby feel his own father's blood pulsing through his veins. He'd had to get the h.e.l.l out.

Joelle was alone now. He knew she wouldn't have come looking for him unless Foster had left. She'd probably made some excuse for Bobby, explained that he had a quick temper-which, in general, he didn't-or invented some other justification for his behavior. Or maybe not. Maybe she'd just let his rage sit there in the room, simmering in the air.

He shoved open the door, swung out of the truck and walked toward Joelle. He felt the cold, hard concrete floor against the soles of his feet, right through his socks. Cold and hard suited his mood.

"He's gone," Joelle confirmed.

"I'm sorry," he said. He was sorry not for walking out on Foster but for abandoning Joelle. He should have stood by her and made clear to Foster exactly whose wife she was. Instead, he'd bolted, leaving her alone with a man she'd once loved with all her heart.

She gave him a sad smile. "It's okay."

No, it wasn't okay. Nothing was okay.

He followed her through the mudroom into the kitchen. The air smelled of coffee. He wondered if from here on in he would always a.s.sociate that scent with Foster, if he would never be able to drink coffee again.

His own cup was resting in the dish rack beside the sink, already rinsed clean. The coffeemaker was turned off. Except for the aroma, he detected no sign that Foster had ever been in his house. Yet the atmosphere felt charged. The sunlight streaming through the windows seemed too bright.

In that glaring summer light, he could see Joelle's face clearly. Her mouth was tense, her eyes tired. Her ponytail hung lopsided, brus.h.i.+ng against her left shoulder.

"He can't have Claudia," Bobby said. If that SOB wanted to reach Claudia, he'd have to get past Bobby, and Bobby intended to make that impossible.

"He doesn't want Claudia," she said wearily. She reached for Bobby's hand. Her fingers felt like icy twigs on his skin. "He wants her to take a blood test, that's all."

"That's all," Bobby echoed, then snorted. "How do we ask her to take a blood test without telling her why? And what if she's a match? What do we tell her then?"

"I don't know." Releasing his hand, Joelle sank into a chair, propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her palms. "It's not a simple situation."

"It's simple enough," Bobby argued, dropping onto another chair. "You and I had an understanding. We based our marriage on that understanding. Claudia is our daughter. That's the end of it."

"His son is dying," Joelle said, her eyes as overly bright as the suns.h.i.+ne pouring through the windows. "Can't you at least have a little sympathy for the man?"

Not as much as Joelle had, obviously. Sure, he felt sorry for Foster in an abstract way. He'd feel sorry for any man whose child was at risk. Maybe he ought to feel sorry for himself, since right now his own daughter seemed at risk.

"If she had the blood test and didn't match," Joelle argued, "she'd never have to know."

"Of course she'd have to know. What do you think-we can sneak a blood test past her?"

"We wouldn't have to tell her what it was for. We could say she's being tested to find out if she matches a distant cousin-"

"Oh, there's a plan." Sarcasm soured Bobby's voice. "You're an only child and my brother's gay. My father's family gave him up long ago. How's your mother fixed for cousins? How does Claudia wind up with a cousin?" He crossed to the sink and washed his hands, just because the whole situation made him feel dirty. "Don't you think she'd ask about this cousin she'd never heard of? Maybe she'd even want to meet this miraculous new cousin of hers."

Rather than commenting on his sarcasm, Joelle nodded in agreement. "You're right. Lying isn't going to help. It's just that we've been lying all along. What's one more lie at this point?"

Bobby dried his hands on a dish towel, buying time to consider his response. Had they been lying all along, or had they been trying to create a family? Had they been lying or simply figuring out a way to survive, a way to make life work? Had Bobby been lying from the start when he'd convinced himself he could be the father of another man's child, and the husband of a woman who hadn't loved him the way he'd loved her?

Everything-his home, his work, his family-had sprouted from a lie. Like a plant grown from a poisoned seed, that lie had broken through the ground and blossomed, but the roots were rotten. Sooner or later the plant was doomed to die.

"Nothing can change the fact that you're her father," Joelle said, twisting in her chair so she could look at him. "If I'd conceived her at a sperm bank, it would have been the same thing."

"No, it wouldn't." He flung the towel aside and shoved his hair back from his face. The kitchen was too warm. The streaming sunlight was killing him. "A sperm bank is anonymous. This..." He waved vaguely toward the front door, through which Foster must have entered his house. "This was a guy you were in love with."

"I was a kid then."

She didn't deny that she'd loved Foster. She wouldn't. Now wasn't the time for lies. Yet acknowledging that she'd once loved that b.a.s.t.a.r.d-a truth Bobby had managed to avoid thinking about for years-pained him. He wished he were the only man she'd ever loved. He'd married her knowing he wasn't, but still...the truth hurt.

"All right." Her shoulders slumped and she glanced away from him. "What do you want, Bobby? What do you want to do about this?"

"I want to tell Drew Foster to go to h.e.l.l." Actually, what he wanted was to turn back the clock a half hour. He wanted to drive home, excited about landing a new contract-even after years in the business, every new contract gave him a thrill-and confident that when he got home, Joelle would be waiting for him. He wanted to arrive and find her finished with her housecleaning, sweaty and heading for the shower. He wanted to pull off his clothes and slip into the shower with her and screw her silly while the water sprayed down onto them.

"What do you want?" he shot back, dreading her answer even though he had to hear it.

She turned back to face the table and folded her hands, as though praying. "I keep thinking about how his son is dying," she said, her voice muted but steady.

"His daughter would have been dead if you'd done what he'd told you to do all those years ago." The words sounded brutal, but he didn't care. "If you'd done what Foster asked back then, Claudia would never even have existed."

"Here's the thing, Bobby." Her voice remained calm, her eyes dry, but she clasped her hands tighter, turning her knuckles white. "Imagine if it was Claudia who was sick today. Imagine the only thing that could save her was a bone marrow transplant from a sibling."

"She's got two brothers."

"Imagine they weren't a match." She seemed to be addressing a molecule of air directly in front of her. "Imagine her life was at stake. If there was the slightest chance that Drew might have gone on to have other children who would be her half brothers or half sisters...You know as well as I do that we'd be hiring a detective to find him. If the shoe was on the other foot, we'd do exactly what he did."

Bobby opened his mouth and then shut it. Joelle was right. He hated her for being right, but he couldn't argue. If Claudia was dying, Bobby would try anything, go anywhere, destroy any family if that was what it took to cure her.

"What happened then happened then," Joelle said. "Now we've got to deal with today. A young man is dying, and there's a chance Claudia can save his life."

Joelle's words and all they implied enraged him. He wanted to hit things, break things. He wanted to confront the doctors treating Drew's son and tell them to come up with some other treatment so he wouldn't have the burden of that boy's life pressing on his back.

He wanted to preserve his family. He wanted to protect his daughter. He wanted to keep on living the lie. It had been a good lie. It had worked for all these years.

He gazed down at Joelle. Seated, she should have looked small. But her spine was straight, her eyes clear, her chin raised. A piece of his soul shriveled inside him as he considered his choice.