My noble feelings about doing the play had worn off by the second day of rehearsals. Even though I knew I was doing the "right thing," my friends didn't understand it at all, and they'd been riding me since they'd found out. "You're doing what?" Eric asked when he learned about it. "You're doing the play with Jamie Sullivan? Are you insane or just plain stupid?" I sort of mumbled that I had a good reason, but he wouldn't let it drop, and he told everyone around us that I had a crush on her. I denied it, of course, which just made them assume it was true, and they'd laugh all the louder and tell the next person they saw. The stories kept getting wilder, too--by lunchtime I'd heard from Sally that I was thinking of getting engaged. I actually think Sally was jealous about it. She'd had a crush on me for years, and the feeling might have been mutual except for the fact that she had a glass eye, and that was something I just couldn't ignore. Her bad eye reminded me of something you'd see stuffed into the head of a mounted owl in a tacky antique shop, and to be honest, it sort of gave me the willies.
I guess that was when I started to resent Jamie again. I know it wasn't her fault, but I was the one who was taking the arrows for Hegbert, who hadn't exactly gone out of his way the night of homecoming to make me feel welcome. I began to stumble through my lines in class for the next few days, not really even attempting to learn them, and occasionally I'd crack a joke or two, which everyone laughed at, except for Jamie and Miss Garber. After rehearsal was over I'd head home to put the play out of my mind, and I wouldn't even bother to pick up the script. Instead I'd joke with my friends about the weird things Jamie did and tell fibs about how it was Miss Garber who had forced me into the whole thing.
Jamie, though, wasn't going to let me off that easy. No, she got me right where it hurts, right smack in the old ego.
I was out with Eric on Saturday night following Beaufort's third consecutive state championship in football, about a week after rehearsals had started. We were hanging out at the waterfront outside of Cecil's Diner, eating hushpuppies and watching people cruising in their cars, when I saw Jamie walking down the street. She was still a hundred yards away, turning her head from side to side, wearing that old brown sweater again and carrying her Bible in one hand. It must have been nine o'clock or so, which was late for her to be out, and it was even stranger to see her in this part of town. I turned my back to her and pulled the collar up on my jacket, but even Margaret--who had banana pudding where her brain should have been--was smart enough to figure out who she was looking for.
"Landon, your girlfriend is here."
"She's not my girlfriend," I said. "I don't have a girlfriend."
"Your fiancee, then."
I guess she'd talked to Sally, too.
"I'm not engaged," I said. "Now knock it off."
I glanced over my shoulder to see if she'd spotted me, and I guess she had. She was walking toward us. I pretended not to notice.
"Here she comes," Margaret said, and giggled.
"I know," I said.
Twenty seconds later she said it again.
"She's still coming." I told you she was quick.
"I know," I said through gritted teeth. If it wasn't for her legs, she could almost drive you as crazy as Jamie.
I glanced around again, and this time Jamie knew I'd seen her and she smiled and waved at me. I turned away, and a moment later she was standing right beside me.
"Hello, Landon," she said to me, oblivious of my scorn. "Hello, Eric, Margaret . . ." She went around the group. Everyone sort of mumbled "hello" and tried not to stare at the Bible.
Eric was holding a beer, and he moved it behind his back so she wouldn't see it. Jamie could even make Eric feel guilty if she was close enough to him. They'd been neighbors at one time, and Eric had been on the receiving end of her talks before. Behind her back he called her "the Salvation Lady," in obvious reference to the Salvation Army. "She would have been a brigadier general," he liked to say. But when she was standing right in front of him, it was another story. In his mind she had an in with God, and he didn't want to be in her bad graces.
"How are you doing, Eric? I haven't seen you around much recently." She said this as if she still talked to him all the time.
He shifted from one foot to the other and looked at his shoes, playing that guilty look for all it was worth.
"Well, I haven't been to church lately," he said.
Jamie smiled that glittery smile. "Well, that's okay, I suppose, as long as it doesn't become a habit or anything."
"It won't."
Now I've heard of confession--that thing when Catholics sit behind a screen and tell the priest about all their sins--and that's the way Eric was when he was next to Jamie. For a second I thought he was going to call her "ma'am."
"You want a beer?" Margaret asked. I think she was trying to be funny, but no one laughed.
Jamie put her hand to her hair, tugging gently at her bun. "Oh . . . no, not really . . . thank you, though."
She looked directly at me with a really sweet glow, and right away I knew I was in trouble. I thought she was going to ask me off to the side or something, which to be honest I thought would turn out better, but I guess that wasn't in her plans.
"Well, you did really well this week at rehearsals," she said to me. "I know you've got a lot of lines to learn, but I'm sure you're going to get them all real soon. And I just wanted to thank you for volunteering like you did. You're a real gentleman."
"Thanks," I said, a little knot forming in my stomach. I tried to be cool, but all my friends were looking right at me, suddenly wondering if I'd been telling them the truth about Miss Garber forcing it on me and everything. I hoped they missed it.
"Your friends should be proud of you," Jamie added, putting that thought to rest.
"Oh, we are," Eric said, pouncing. "Very proud. He's a good guy, that Landon, what with his volunteering and all."
Oh no.
Jamie smiled at him, then turned back to me again, her old cheerful self. "I also wanted to tell you that if you need any help, you can come by anytime. We can sit on the porch like we did before and go over your lines if you need to."
I saw Eric mouth the words "like we did before" to Margaret. This really wasn't going well at all. By now the pit in my stomach was as big as Paul Bunyan's bowling ball.
"That's okay," I mumbled, wondering how I could squirm my way out of this. "I can learn them at home."
"Well, sometimes it helps if someone's there to read with you, Landon," Eric offered.
I told you he'd stick it to me, even though he was my friend.
"No, really," I said to him, "I'll learn the lines on my own."
"Maybe," Eric said, smiling, "you two should practice in front of the orphans, once you've got it down a little better. Sort of a dress rehearsal, you know? I'm sure they'd love to see it."
You could practically see Jamie's mind start clicking at the mention of the word orphans. Everyone knew what her hot button was. "Do you think so?" she asked.
Eric nodded seriously. "I'm sure of it. Landon was the one who thought of it first, but I know that if I was an orphan, I'd love something like that, even if it wasn't exactly the real thing."
"Me too," Margaret chimed in.
As they spoke, the only thing I could think about was that scene from Julius Caesar where Brutus stabs him in the back. Et tu, Eric?
"It was Landon's idea?" she asked, furrowing her brow. She looked at me, and I could tell she was still mulling it over.
But Eric wasn't about to let me off the hook that easy. Now that he had me flopping on the deck, the only thing left to do was gut me. "You'd like to do that, wouldn't you, Landon?" he said. "Helping the orphans, I mean."
It wasn't exactly something you could answer no to, was it?
"I reckon so," I said under my breath, staring at my best friend. Eric, despite the remedial classes he was in, would have been one hell of a chess player.
"Good, then, it's all settled. That's if it's okay with you, Jamie." His s
mile was so sweet, it could have flavored half the RC cola in the county.
"Well . . . yes, I suppose I'll have to talk to Miss Garber and the director of the orphanage, but if they say it's okay, I think it would be a fine idea."
And the thing was, you could tell she was really happy about it.
Checkmate.
The next day I spent fourteen hours memorizing my lines, cursing my friends, and wondering how my life had spun so out of control. My senior year certainly wasn't turning out the way I thought it would when it began, but if I had to perform for a bunch of orphans, I certainly didn't want to look like an idiot.
Chapter 6
The first thing we did was talk to Miss Garber about our plans for the orphans, and she thought it was a marvelous idea. That was her favorite word, by the way--marvelous--after she'd greeted you with "Hellooooo." On Monday, when she realized that I knew all my lines, she said, "Marvelous!" and for the next two hours whenever I'd finish up a scene, she'd say it again. By the end of the rehearsal, I'd heard it about four zillion times.
But Miss Garber actually went our idea one better. She told the class what we were doing, and she asked if other members of the cast would be willing to do their parts as well, so that the orphans could really enjoy the whole thing. The way she asked meant that they really didn't have a choice, and she looked around the class, waiting for someone to nod so she could make it official. No one moved a muscle, except for Eddie. Somehow he'd inhaled a bug up his nose at that exact moment, and he sneezed violently. The bug flew out his nose, shot across his desk, and landed on the floor right by Norma Jean's leg. She jumped out of her chair and screamed out loud, and the people on either side of her shouted, "Eww . . . gross!" The rest of the class started looking around and craning their necks, trying to see what happened, and for the next ten seconds there was total pandemonium in the classroom. For Miss Garber, that was as good of an answer as she needed.
"Marvelous," she said, closing the discussion.
Jamie, meanwhile, was getting really excited about performing for the orphans. During a break in rehearsals she pulled me aside and thanked me for thinking of them. "There's no way you would know," she said almost conspiratorially, "but I've been wondering what to do for the orphanage this year. I've been praying about it for months now because I want this Christmas to be the most special one of all."
"Why is this Christmas so important?" I asked her, and she smiled patiently, as if I'd asked a question that didn't really matter.
"It just is," she said simply.
The next step was to talk it over with Mr. Jenkins, the director of the orphanage. Now I'd never met Mr. Jenkins before, being that the orphanage was in Morehead City, which was across the bridge from Beaufort, and I'd never had any reason to go there. When Jamie surprised me with the news the following day that we'd be meeting him later that evening, I was sort of worried that I wasn't dressed nice enough. I know it was an orphanage, but a guy wants to make a good impression. Even though I wasn't as excited about it as Jamie was (no one was as excited as Jamie), I didn't want to be regarded as the Grinch who ruined Christmas for the orphans, either.
Before we went to the orphanage for our meeting, we had to walk to my house to pick up my mom's car, and while there, I planned on changing into something a little nicer. The walk took about ten minutes or so, and Jamie didn't say much along the way, at least until we got to my neighborhood. The homes around mine were all large and well kept, and she asked who lived where and how old the houses were. I answered her questions without much thought, but when I opened the front door to my house, I suddenly realized how different this world was compared with her own. She had a shocked expression on her face as she looked around the living room, taking in her surroundings.
No doubt it was the fanciest home she'd ever been in. A moment later I saw her eyes travel to the paintings that lined the walls. My ancestors, so to speak. As with many southern families, my entire lineage could be traced in the dozen faces that lined the walls. She stared at them, looking for a resemblance, I think, then turned her attention to the furnishings, which still looked practically new, even after twenty years. The furniture had been handmade, assembled or carved from mahogany and cherry, and designed specifically for each room. It was nice, I had to admit, but it wasn't something I really thought about. To me, it was just a house. My favorite part of it was the window in my room that led to the porch on the upper level. That was my escape hatch.
I showed her around, though, giving her a quick tour of the sitting room, the library, the den, and the family room, Jamie's eyes growing wider with each new room. My mom was out on the sun porch, sipping a mint julep and reading, and heard us poking around. She came back inside to say hello.
I think I told you that every adult in town adored Jamie, and that included my mom. Even though Hegbert was always giving the kinds of sermons that had our family's name written all over them, my mom never held it against Jamie, because of how sweet she was. So they talked while I was upstairs rifling through my closet for a clean shirt and a tie. Back then boys wore ties a lot, especially when they were meeting someone in a position of authority. When I came back down the stairs fully dressed, Jamie had already told my mom about the plan.
"It's a wonderful idea," Jamie said, beaming at me. "Landon's really got a special heart."
My mom--after making sure she'd heard Jamie correctly--faced me with her eyebrows raised. She stared at me like I was an alien.
"So this was your idea?" my mom asked. Like everyone else in town, she knew Jamie didn't lie.
I cleared my throat, thinking of Eric and what I still wanted to do to him. It involved molasses and fire ants, by the way.
"Kind of," I said.
"Amazing." It was the only word she could get out. She didn't know the details, but she knew I must have been boxed into a corner to do something like this. Mothers always know stuff like that, and I could see her peering closely at me and trying to figure it out. To escape her inquisitive gaze, I checked my watch, feigned surprise, and casually mentioned to Jamie that we'd better be going. My mom got the car keys from her pocketbook and handed them to me, still giving me the once-over as we headed out the door. I breathed a sigh of relief, imagining that I'd somehow gotten away with something, but as I walked Jamie to the car, I heard my mother's voice again.
"Come on over anytime, Jamie!" my mom shouted. "You're always welcome here."
Even mothers could stick it to you sometimes.
I was still shaking my head as I got in the car.
"Your mother's a wonderful lady," Jamie said.
I started the engine. "Yeah," I said, "I guess so."
"And your house is beautiful."
"Uh-huh."
"You should count your blessings."
"Oh," I said, "I do. I'm practically the luckiest guy alive."
Somehow she didn't catch the sarcastic tone of my voice.
We got to the orphanage just about the time it was getting dark. We were a couple of minutes early, and the director was on the phone. It was an important call and he couldn't meet with us right away, so we made ourselves comfortable. We were waiting on a bench in the hallway outside his door, when Jamie turned to me. Her Bible was in her lap. I guess she wanted it for support, but then again, maybe it was just her habit.
"You did really well today," she said. "With your lines, I mean."
"Thanks," I said, feeling proud and dejected at exactly the same time. "I still haven't learned my beats, though," I offered. There was no way we could practice those on the porch, and I hoped she wasn't going to suggest it.
"You will. They're easy once you know you all the words."
"I hope so."
Jamie smiled, and after a moment she changed the subject, sort of throwing me off track. "Do you ever think about the future, Landon?" she asked.
I was startled by her question because it sounded . . . so ordinary.
"Yeah, sure. I guess so," I answered cautiously.
"Well, what do you want to do with your life?"
I shrugged, a little wary of where she was going with this. "I don't know yet. I haven't figured that part out. I'm going to UNC next fall, at least I hope so. I have to get accepted first."
"You will," she said.
"How do you know?"
"Because I've prayed for that, too."
When she said it, I thought we were heading into a discussion about the power of prayer and faith, but Jamie tossed yet another curve-ball at me.
"How about after college? What do you want to do then?"
"I don't know," I said, shrugging. "Maybe I'll be a one-armed lumberjack."
She didn't think it was funny.
"I think you should become a minister," she said seriously. "I think you're good with people, and they'd respect what you have to say."
Though the concept was absolutely ridiculous, with her I just knew it came from the heart and she intended it as a compliment.
"Thanks," I said. "I don't know if I'll do that, but I'm sure I'll find something." It took a moment for me to realize that the conversation had stalled and that it was my turn to ask a question.
"How about you? What do you want to do in the future?"
Jamie turned away and got a far-off gaze in her eyes, making me wonder what she was thinking, but it vanished almost as quickly as it came.
"I want to get married," she said quietly. "And when I do, I want my father to walk me down the aisle and I want everyone I know to be there. I want the church bursting with people."
"That's all?" Though I wasn't averse to the idea of marriage, it seemed kind of silly to hope for that as your life's goal.
"Yes," she said. "That's all I want."
The way she answered made me suspect that she thought she'd end up like Miss Garber. I tried to make her feel better, even though it still seemed silly to me.
"Well, you'll get married someday. You'll meet some guy and the two of you will hit it off, and he'll ask you to marry him. And I'm sure that your father will be happy to walk you down the aisle."
I didn't mention the part about having a big crowd in the church. I guess it was the one thing that even I couldn't imagine.
Jamie thought carefully about my answer, really pondering the way I said it, though I didn't know why.